Question About Strongest/Weakest Firing Priority

[PvK]

Strongest/Weakest being based on resource cost would match my memory from the way it originally worked in beta.

I think smallest/largest is based on the hull size (ship class max kT), so on largest, a baseship with only a Master Computer and no other components will be targetted before a full battleship.

I think each targetting type is a simple test, so that it can fall through to the next category easily, so players have more control over their orders. Imagine if "Has Weapons" were not just a Y/N has weapons test, but sorted based on the number of weapons: If so, it would very often be the only criteria used to choose a target, so Has Weapons, Nearest would result in seeking out the ship with the most weapons, even if it was far away, instead of seeking the nearest ship which has weapons. i.e., if it worked that way, it should be called "most weapons".

PvK

[CaptainAL]

According to the test I just conducted, "Largest/Smallest" relates to damage resistance only. I used a dreadnought design that had high damage resistance and baseship designs that had both higher and lower damage resistance than the dreadnought, with "Largest" as firing priority. The higher damage resistant baseships were targeted first, followed by the middle range dreadnoughts and the lower damage resistant baseships were targeted LAST.

So this would indicate that damage resistance alone is the basis for the Largest/Weakest firing priority, and not the ship size at all. This was reflected in my actual combat situations where my ships always targeted the decoy first while I had "Largest" as first priority, no matter what I used as secondary priority. This is not what I would have expected either, I had assumed Largest was based on the ship size.

So, if it is one simple test (which seems to be so), then according to my simulation tests the relationships are:

Largest: Targets ships with greatest structural points (damage resistance) first. Shield generation points are not counted and ship size does not matter.

Strongest: Targets ships of highest resource cost first.

Has Weapons: Simple Yes/No test.