Skirmisher Targeting

[Morbio]

Is the targeting system optimised?

I notice that with skirmishers, and fleet missile phase, that when fighting a few units then all your ranged units will target the same enemy unit. My most recent example was a line of 16 light warships against 2 enemy warships. I think about 8-10 of my ships fired and all attacked the same enemy unit, which was then destroyed in the melee phase. The remaining untouched enemy unit then sunk one of my fleet before being destroyed in the pursuit phase.

Surely there should be a more random element to the attack phase? I find it hard to believe that in ancient battles there would such a coordinated attack on 1 unit. I'm not suggesting an even spread, and I accept that there may be some targeting for the experienced units, but surely there should be more spread?

This is not an isolated incident, it happens pretty much every time and it's somewhat frustrating as I usually end up taking more losses than seems sensible.

[loki100]

this from Pocus (sort of related thread) maybe a partial explanation?

Experienced units in ranged phase get one re-targeting opportunity per experience level. It means that a skirmisher who pick (at random) a target which is already exhausted by a previous one, will be able to re-target x time to finally 'find' a non exhausted target. That's very important...

my guess is your ships may have relatively low experience - mine usually do as they don't get the regular combat experience of my land based skirmishers?

[Morbio]

this from Pocus (sort of related thread) maybe a partial explanation?

Experienced units in ranged phase get one re-targeting opportunity per experience level. It means that a skirmisher who pick (at random) a target which is already exhausted by a previous one, will be able to re-target x time to finally 'find' a non exhausted target. That's very important...

my guess is your ships may have relatively low experience - mine usually do as they don't get the regular combat experience of my land based skirmishers?

You are probably correct in this point, but the odds of 10 ships randomly picking the same target in the first instance is infinitesimally small! Something isn't right. I'd expect a random selection by 10 units would give something like a 3-7 or more even split.

[Swuul]

My most recent example was a line of 16 light warships against 2 enemy warships. I think about 8-10 of my ships fired and all attacked the same enemy unit, which was then destroyed in the melee phase.

So the enemy had 2 ships, you had 16? And of those 16 then 8 or 10 targeted one of those two, thus 6 or 8 targeted the other one? If I understood right your explanation, that spread of targeting falls within 94% of "perfect" random distribution, ie pretty damn close to what would have to be expected.

[Morbio]

My most recent example was a line of 16 light warships against 2 enemy warships. I think about 8-10 of my ships fired and all attacked the same enemy unit, which was then destroyed in the melee phase.

So the enemy had 2 ships, you had 16? And of those 16 then 8 or 10 targeted one of those two, thus 6 or 8 targeted the other one? If I understood right your explanation, that spread of targeting falls within 94% of "perfect" random distribution, ie pretty damn close to what would have to be expected.

No, you misunderstand. Only 8-10 of my ships fired, the others didn't fire at all. All the ships that fired attacked the same ship.

In reality I doubt all of these ships would be in range to attack the same ship. Just by proximity some would have to attack a different target.