What happened here?

It finally dawned on me why fighters are attacked before capital ships. I thought it was either a bug or just ignorant combat tactics, but no, I get it now. The fighters aren't there to fill out the logistical points - they're there as ESCORTS. You have to blast your way past the escorts before you can get to the capital ship. I GET that now. Fine. Now I can put together more balanced fleets.

Anyway... Something went wrong in a battle I just had. I put together a fleet of three frigates, a heavy fighter and five or six escort fighters. I attacked first, so the enemy only got one shot before it died, but that one shot was at one of my frigates, not at any of the fighters. Why?

It was explained to me in another post that the AI chooses the most lethal, yet easiest to kill ship first. That was not the frigate. This is what my fleet looked like:
Frigate x 3 with 20HP + 6 lasers + 1 Stinger + 1 railgun
Heavy Fighter x 1 with 10 HP + 2 lasers + 1 Stinger
Escort Fighter x 5 or 6 with 6 HP + 1 laser + 1 armor + 1 beam protection + 1 missile protection

My frigates didn't have any defenses, because I thought it didn't need any with escorts along. I just packed it with as many weapons as would fit. It was still tougher than than any two or three of its escorts. If that's the only reason it was shot at, why didn't it shoot at the heavy fighter instead? It didn't have any protection either and it was easier to kill.

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+458

The targeting order is based on the formula:

Total Attack / (Total Defense + HP)

The ship with the highest result will be shot at first, then the next highest, etc.

Your frigates had a much higher attack/defense ratio, and were thusly targeted first. The heavies would then be targeted next, and the escorts last.

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So if I read you correctly, a ship with one hitpoint, no armor and a 1 value attack weapon will always be targeted first as long as you make sure your main ships have a slightly lesser value, i.e defensive value is always just slightly greater than attack value ( making the a/d ratio <1 ), as the escort will always have a value of 1.

Therefore, the best escort to act as cannon fodder to distract the ai while your heavies vaporized him would be a cargo hull equipped with a small laser...cheap and easy to make....and a bit cheesy...

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Not really:

- cargo hull ship is not exactly ... cheap.

- They only have 1 HP.

- They take up 5 Logistic point.

Considering all that, you will be losing 10 tp 15 Logistic point to what you call Canno Fodder that very likely won't survive one turn anyway, not to mention the capital lost. So I think that type of escort hurt a lot more then help

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+458

If you build all your ships to an A/D ratio <1, accomapnied by defenseless armed cargos, that then yes, the cargos would be shot at first. But that's a horribly inefficient way to go about it, especially since the cargos will be guaranteed to die.

A better bet would be to simpyl design useful ships with the targeting formual kept in mind. For example, you could build a theoretical fleet as follows (I haven't figured the sizes/components required to determine if these ships would require the same weapon/defense tech levels):

Tank x1: Huge hull, 60 attack, 10 defense. Weighting: 1.03
Swarmer x10: Tiny hull, 10 attack, 4 defense. Weighting: 1.00

In this fleet, the huge ship would be attacked first. Thanks to its better defense and large HP, it's entirely possible that it could soak up many hits from enemy fighters without taking much damage at all. Meanwhile, a multitude of light fighters can swarm your enemies while only carrying enough cheap defenses to lower their target weight below that of the Tank-ship.

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You lost me. And bear in mind that I flunked 8th grade algebra, so figuring up ratios isn't my strong suit.

Because the frigate's attack strength greatly outweighed its defenses, that's why it was attacked first? Even though it was still tougher than any three of its escorts, it was attacked because I put too many weapons on it?

So.... errr..... What sort of fleet do I need to design to where the escorts are attacked first? My *intention* was to have cannon fodder escorts soak up any return fire while my capital ships smashed the enemy to bits. That's why I put defenses on the escorts and skimped on weapons. And why I didn't put *any* defenses on the frigates. I should put weapons and NO defenses on the escorts and put defenses on the capital ships?

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