If the AI attacks a stack of ships, which one dies first?

From my own experience, it seems the first ship to take damage is always the one with the toughest defense.

~SDC~

When two fleets of ships encounter eachother, the ship with the highest attack attacks the one with the highest defense. AntiMatter Missiles may have a special clause in there because of it's unusual stats, though. I'm not sure about that.

~SDC~

AFAIK, whenever there is an AMM in a stack, when attacked, the AMM will always be the first to be destroyed. Then (I think) the one with the highest defense, as Arturo said.
So the best way to protect them is not stacking but making a wall arounf them until their target is within the AMM moving range.

I really cannot believe that the game destroyed my Antimatter Missile before destroying any of the other ships. I think it would be extremely helpful if I could say that one ship is a Designated Defender for that square.

Well Zergfest, that would make sense (destroy the most dangerous enemy ship first). And I agree with you, it would be nice to have the possibility of designate a ship as stack defender.
however, as I've said before, it's the one with the highest defense that is attacked first (at least I think so). Except if there is an AMM in the stack: then it goes first. And is always lost.

By the way a few threads down there is another one about AMM. Maybe you could have a look there since someone else seemed to confirm what I said.

I say this because most of what i know from the game I learned here, reading the posts and then play-checking it. So I feel better telling how (I think) things are, when others voices say something similar

Umm, I don't think that it always picks the highest def... in fact I know it didn't on at least a few occaisions in one of my games. Seemed to me that it picked the easiest ship to destroy (this is in space not on a planet). I had a couple of weakened battleships stacked with an axe or two at full strength. The Axes had better def and more hps, I figured they'd take the shots and save my battleships, but nope, three attacks latter I had 2 full strength axes and zero battleships.

It doesn't bother me that much really, combat isn't a big part of this game (at least the modeling of it). However, it would be nice if you could control fleets in some manner, or at least as a defender with multiple ships you should be able to pick the one you want to defend first.

And there is this one about the game combat mechanics. very interesting read.
http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?BID=GF&id=53552

(I hope this work, this is the first time I try to paste a link)

Ubertaco,

To quote from the thread I mentioned above (see the link):

" #12 by Veteran Code Monkey - 5/3/2003 12:51:50 PM

It's been explained before: each round of combat the best attacker squares off with the best defender (exception being AM Missiles). This process goes back and forth until one stack (or sometimes even both) are destroyed. So, no matter how big the stacks, all combat is resolved ship to ship singularly. "

And Code Monkey usually has accurate information .

Well his accurate information is in direct contradiction to my ingame experience.

Though in my case it was not a stack vs. a stack, it was 3 enemy battleships seperately attacking my stack (don't know if I had it as a fleet or not, don't know if that matters) of 2 battleships and 2 axes. The battleships had def of 8 the axes def of 9. The final tally was 2 living enemy battleships and 2 living axes.

I'm not making this up! I swear...

Could it also take into account hitpoints? The best defenders aren't necessarily the ones with the highest defence value. Took me a while to realise this one.
I forget how many BAxes and BShips have, but IIRC BShips have more than BAxes?

What about experience?

I'm not sure what the HP difference is between axes and battle ships, but the point was that my Battle ships were pretty well shot up, and I was hoping that my axes would cover them, they didn't.

Like I said it's not that big of a deal to me, I accept the unsatisfactory treatment combat gets in GalCiv, but I'd like some more small amount of control, if not some kind of expanded treatment. Make it an option so that if you want to keep the same system currently in place then you can, but I'd really like to see some kind of expansion to how combat is handled.

I have definitely seen cases where my planet is attacked by say a Frigate, and rather than fighting with my BattleHammer with the big defense and hit points, the Frigate destroys a Corvette or a BattleCruiser.

Personally, I think this sucks. We have specialized attacker and defender ships, we should be able to use the tough defenders to protect the fragile attackers.

I had two cases where normal troop transports were in orbit around one of my planets that was defended by a battleaxe and a battlehammer. Guess which ships the incoming frigate destroyed? The defenseless transports. I would think that the nice defensive ships I had there would have taken the hit first. I have had no confirmed case in my games where a stack in space had transport fatalities first. But the mighty defenders did fail around a planet.

I would not contradict CodeMonkey (post 9); I think that does seem to be the case when two stacks fight each other.

However, a personal guesstimate for non-stacks, I think the game does something simpler: it attacks the leftmost ship that shows up in the ship box at the lower right. For example, if you have a BH then a BA, it will attack the BH, but if you have a BA then a BH, it will attack the BA. I could be wrong, though, and I would definitely welcome a "designated defender" command.

In reference to post #15 by Feargus I can confirm that behavior from my own in-game experience.

The game will attack sequentially based on orbit position (left to right in the ship screen) IF the ships involved are not in a fleet. So if you want your ships to defend each other they MUST band together in a fleet. The exception to this is AMM... keep them always behind the front a bit and don't stack them; part of the cost of their power is extreme vulnerability. As such they require an ACTIVE escort of ships capable of destroying other ships so that the missiles can continue unimpeded to their target.