Ship combat algorithm

from GalCiv2 Forums
I remember reading about the combat algorith quite a bit before the game was released. As far as I was led to believe, the smallest ship will always be attacked first. Because of this, I thought it would be cool to design a fighter that was purely defencive. Early on in the game when everyone was pretty much using beam weapons, I made a fighter with a shield rating of 4. It had no attack, and I just stuck it in with my fleets because I thought it would draw fire and survive while the rest of my fleet kicked ass. What I started to notice is that they just didn't fire on it. They went for the next bigger. Kinda foiled my plan. Can anyone explain this?
7,323 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Two factors go into deciding who to kill - The easiest to kill, and the biggest threat. Size doesn't really matter except that in general, smaller ships are easier to kill.

But of course, if what you are mentioning was the case, then it wouldn't be very smart.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The ship has no weapons. It was deemed not a threat then, so therefore they don't target it.
Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The wiki explains all

Link

Ships are sorted by

attack_rating
---------------------------------------
defense_rating + hp

thus the ship with most attack potential, least defense potential and least hitpoints will be attacked first. Which is kind of sensible if you think about it