Targeting and Priority
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Targeting and Priority
Combat does not spray damage evenly across every enemy ship. Fire is biased toward front-line hulls first, then middle combat ships, then rear logistics and support. Planetary defenses use a separate dome-first order when they are the targets.
Echelons (ships)
Ships have a target priority tier in the catalog:
| Tier | Role | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| 1 — Front | Screens & light combat | Fighters, Corvette, Frigate, Interceptors / Kamikaze |
| 2 — Middle | Main combat line | Cruiser, Battleship, Battlecruiser, Bomber, heavy combat hulls |
| 3 — Rear | Logistics & support | Cargo, Recyclers, Probe, Carrier, healers / support |
Exact tier per hull is on that ship’s catalog page.
When the front tier still has ships:
- Most incoming damage hits the front (typically clamped around 60–98.5%, with a little random jitter).
- Rear (and deeper) shares are tightly limited (on the order of a few percent combined) while a real front screen exists.
- Within a tier, damage splits by ship count (quantity), not by individual hit points alone.
If the front cannot absorb everything (or is wiped), unused damage escalates into middle and rear tiers.
Tier bias weights front much more heavily than middle or rear when computing shares, so fat fighter screens soak fire; thin screens leak hits into your battle line and backline.
Who aims this way?
- Attacking fleets use target priority against enemy ships.
- Planetary turrets use the same ship tiers when they fire at an attacking fleet.
- When a colony’s ships and defenses both fire in the same round, their damage is merged, then re-aimed with one target-priority pass before it hits the attacker’s shared shield pool. That keeps turrets and ships focused on the same front screen instead of each volley picking its own mid/rear bias.
Hull kills still resolve with the same front-first shot logic (see Rapid Fire — overkill does not splash).
Defense targeting (dome-first)
Incoming fire aimed at planetary defenses is not split evenly across every turret:
- Soak domes (Small Shield Dome, Large Shield Dome, Planetary Dome, and similar) tend to take hull damage first.
- Remaining damage then hits armed turrets (flak, rockets, lasers, capitals, etc.).
- While barrier / absorption domes are alive, total damage to the defense yard is also reduced (see Damage and Shields).
This is the defense-side counterpart to ship echelons: protective structures soak so the guns stay online longer.
Player implications
- Fat screens protect Capitals and logistics — expect light craft to die first.
- Thin or missing fronts expose Cruisers, Battleships, and Carriers much earlier.
- Rear logistics and Carriers are hard to snipe while a solid front still stands.
- Rapid Fire interacts with this: high RF into the front clears screens faster and opens deeper tiers sooner.
- On a defended colony, strip domes before you expect the turret wall to melt.
- Soft defense spam (flak / rockets) still leans into the attacker’s front screen — the same priority rules as fleets.