Initiative

[Cyclop]

I was wondering how is initiative resolved at a warp point? Does the defender always go first? And is initiative any different at non-warp points?

[spoon]

In SE4 Gold, the defender always goes first on a warp-point. In old SE4, it is determined by player order.

[Suicide Junkie]

For non-warppoint combat the defender still goes first, but since nobody starts out in firing range, its a toss up over formations and engine speed to decide who gets into range and fires first.

[Atrocities]

Also in this situation, as SJ described, weapons range does play an imporant part. If you have longer range weapons then the other guy, then you stand a real chance of tearing his fleet apart before he even gets the change to fire upon yours.

[dogscoff]

This is why you'll often see players load their warp point defences with the lower range/slow reload/heavy hitter weapons while offensive craft and in-system defences are more likely to have long range/ fast reload/ medium damage weapons.

[primitive]

Originally posted by spoon:
In SE4 Gold, the defender always goes first on a warp-point. In old SE4, it is determined by player order.

Not always. There is a bug (or a feature) who makes the attacker fire first once in a while. From my own experience (PBW) I would guess it happens less than 5% of the time. Never been able to figure out what causes it though

[Fyron]

It might have to do with both players sending ships in on the same day, when the defender already has some other vehicles on the WP. The game might sometimes decide that the "attacker" was there first, so it is the defender, but still places the ships as if it were a through the WP battle.