Do weapons target individually, in groups by size, or all the same target (except PD)?
Google doesn't provide an answer I feel confident in. A lot of people seeming to guess as to what's true, but no one who seems to be sure.
If I have a BB with a KA large slot, a plasma large slot, and a lance, is the BB going to fire everything at one target every time? Will the KA and plasma fire at the same thing every time?
The answer would have big implications for whether it's better to, say, have a DD with two plasmas and one weapon that's better at taking down shields, or just have two DD designs, one with pure plasma, one with purely weapons that are better at hacking down shields.
Posted Oct 19, 2017, 3:58 PM UTC · edited
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I just ran a couple of quick and dirty tests.
Test scenerio is a battleship with weapons vs. 3 battleships, one with armor two with shields.
1st test: Tachyon, KA, Plasma - fires everything at battlship with no shields.
2nd test: Tachyon, KA, Plasma, Distruptor - Tachyon fires at ship with no shields, everything else fires and ship with shields. Until shields were down, at which point Tachyon changed target.
These initial tests points towards different mounts on the same ship firing at different preferred targets, but what target is preferred can change based on the other mounts.
More testing probably needed.
Really appreciate having some hard evidence.
I'd say that your test results are most consistent with the idea that each weapon size class on a ship all group-fires at a single target.
Your test clearly proves that it's not the case that all weapons on a ship focus the same target since in the 2nd test the Tachyon targeted a different ship from the other weapons.
If each mount targeted individually, it's very weird that the plasma focused the ship with shields.
But if mounts of the same size on a ship all focus on one target then your test makes sense: the aggregate of KA, Plasma, and Disruptor (assuming they were all large mounts) probably had more total anti-shield bonus than anti-armor bonus, so the large mounts all focused the ship with shields and the plasma got "dragged" into targeting a sub-optimal target even though ideally it should have been firing at the ship with no shields.
Not quite hard evidence yet. Think a bigger sample size is needed for that : )
I'll give it a quick shot with some medium mounts mixed in.
For now, 6 L mounts Distruptor/Plasma.
1 Distruptor, 5 Plasma - Shoots at thing with no shields until dead.
2 Distruptor, 4 Plasma - Shoots at thing with shields until dead.
3 Distruptor, 3 Plasma - Shoots at thing with shield until shields are down, then switches to another target with shields.
Right, so looking a few Battleship designs with Small, Medium, and Large weapons, e.g 2 small Distruptor, 2 medium Plasma, and 2 large Laser - all mounts fire at the same target in all designs tested.
In the example above, a shielded target was preferred and kept after shield were down.
Might be a bit of a reach, but from this and the 6L Distruptor/Plasma thing above we might be able to say targets and 'stickiness' are based on number of weapons rather than damage output, i.e 2 small has more weight than 1 large.
Giga Cannon and 4 Plasma behaves a bit like Tachyon 4 KA. Plasmas pick an unshielded target. The Giga shoots at a shielded target, but didn't switch targets once the shield was down.
Looking a bit like all mounts fire at the same target, but XL slots get to pick their own.
Yeah, this is what I'm thinking. XL focus target X, S/M/L focus target Y, and (presumably) PD focuses target Z (pretty sure PD must target its own targets otherwise people would have probably noticed it fucking over their fleet damage).
Glad to have that answered as it definitely affects how I'll be building my ships in future. It tends to suggest that it makes sense to have a few extra classes, I think, so that you can have some targeting flexibility.
I think fewer classes, to spread damage as little as possible. Sure, that KA or Distruptor isn't being as efficient hitting the target with no shields left, but the faster that boat goes down the less damage you take.
Not as fun as having a bunch of specialised ships, though.
It'd be interesting to see if there's any targeting preference based on the weapons of the other ship. Like, would your boat rather fire at the red laser tickle monster or the plasma III murder ship.
One more, if you're interested.
Torpedo slots also seem to follow the rest of the mounts. I was hoping being a special slot they would target separately, like XL seems to.
With Energy Torps/Plasma:
3 Torps and 2 Torps both go for shields, and switch to another shielded target once shields are down.
1 Torp goes for shields and mostly stuck on the same target, but would sometimes switch halfway through killing something.
3 Devastator Torps also went for things with shields, and did not switch unless the rest of the slots were all Distruptors..
I realised that not having a ship with no armor and no shields may be skewing the results, perhaps preference for lower armor would look like a preference for shields in these tests.
btw, is someone going around downvoting all your posts? I've upvoted your replies to me, but they're still all at 1...
Odd re: the karma thing. Maybe. I've expressed some unpopular opinions in the last 48 hours (like not being a fan of the whole Catalan independence thing). No big deal, as it's only karma. Thanks for the sentiment.
As for the torp slot thing that's definitely interesting, and disappointing. I would have expected them to pick their own target. But it's good to know even if, as you note, it's not quite established with certainty, as it has implications for DD and CL design.