Odd combat bug with Aircraft.

Steeldeath

Have noticed that if your fleet possesses the capability of damaging enemy aircraft, that when you get to the last enemy fleet (assuming there is more than one) you MUST destroy ALL aircraft before damage will start on enemy fleet ships.  

For example: I attack a trade node with 30 cruisers (lance as capital,  lasers for turret, and heavy cannons in heavy slot) with higher military rank and presumeably higher leader rank than my opponent.  He has 15 cruisers and several hundred aircraft.  

He attacks, I lose 1 cruiser.  I attack, he loses 2 cruisers.  2nd round, he launches aircraft.  I destroy 30 of his fighters per attack and deal no damage to his cruisers (this includes when the heavy cannons fire).  He destroys 2 more of mine.  

This continues until my commander runs out of vigor and flees.  

Interesting thing, a fleet of destroyers with just cannons equipped can fire on and damage enemy fleet ships just fine regardless of aircraft.  

Please fix before too many people figure out how to abuse this.

lovegaming

this might be just related with weapon types

navan1

Actually from what I've seen that isn't due to it being the last enemy ship, rather it's what I believe is something in targeting and I dearly hope is a bug. If not I'd hope we get an explanation on how targeting works. In fact that was the point of a post of mine in General Discussion after getting some odd targeting in team battles. From that I found out that team targeting is due to a combination of Scramblers and Targeting modules on both yours and the enemy ships/AC and thus someone other then the leader can get attacked. From learning this I've noticed when the AC thing happens that  usually BC/Cruisers with few to no targ/scram mods go against another BC/Cruiser that uses AC with Scram/Targ (neither enemy ship/AC are conclusively to say that X setup does it). This is especially unusual when Lance and several other weapons have "prior to attack ships" in their description which seems to usually mean  attack ships first.

Steeldeath

It would stand to reason.  But to the point, I do run with a scram/targ setup on my cruisers I have yet to see anything without these have any problem whatsoever hitting me.

I do concur about team play.  Running with 2 other people who don't use scramblers can get nerve-wracking when I have more ships, more armor, and higher bonuses than they do and they're getting slammed.

It may, as you say, be related to a wierd combination of weapon priorities, scrambler/targeter effects, and the range mechanics themselves.

navan1

Okay I just had an arena battle where I had 20 BC using Mil, Adv and regular Targeting and Mil, Adv Scrambler modules. Weapons were Turret - Mil Miss, Heavy - Heavy Rail Gun and Cap - Solar Lance. All against 21 Cruisers using Mil Targ, Mil Scram, Adv Targ and Fighter Bay using turret Rail Gun, Heavy - Heavy Cannon and Capital - Enhanced Lance. They had 600 Interceptors that up till now been ignored through 2 sets of comms. The Interceptors were using Mil Targeting and I believe Mil Missile (might not recall that one right). My BCs proceeded to attack solely the AC, however, when I brought up my other BC set using all Armor Mods, Mil Scram and a Fighter Bay with Cap-Heavy Rail Cannons and Tur/Heavy - Heavy Rail Guns, he ignored the AC and blew out the 21 Cruisers.

To me that has to be a bug. Reason being is I could understand being forced to target AC if you have bad range (ie they're swarming you), but when you have the superior range then you should by far target the main ship with the appropriate weapons. Given that all my past experiences seem to always involve THE cruiser/BC with the FB, I suspect it has something to do with having a FB on board that suddenly changes the targeting and will see if I can test this.