How does enemy AI decides which ships to attack in combat simulator? and how defense works?

from GalCiv2 Forums
Playing DL, mid to end game.

I'm trying to find a good ship combo for my fleets. So far, i'm using a high number of small ships, with both attack and defense, leaded by a capital ship, huge hull, with big numbers on both attack and defense.

1. How does AI decides which ship attacks 1st in combat? So far is working, they always attack the capital ship, which survives every battle more or less, while little ships do the killing. Question is, can i drop the defense on small ships and add more firepower?

2. How exactly defense works? In current game, i use small ships with 5 missile/4 shield and capital ship with 25 missile and 44 shield (fighting against drath legion and they specced beam/shield). I attacked a drath fleet to test my new cap ship, and did excellent. Then next turn, i attacked a defender type lonely ship, garrison planet, and the friggin lonely ship destroys my cap ship!!! How is that posible?
My cap ship had 68 hp left out of a total of 82 or so, and drath defender had a beam attack of 19 or so vs my 44 shield. How the heck my poor ship got destoyed ??
I thought that 44 shield against a 19 beam attack should absorb the hit completely. Am i missing something?

3. Related to number 2, what's a good rule of thumb when deciding how much defense u put on your cap ships in relation to enemy's attack? Let's say an enemy battleship has a 40 attack, what's a good defense number? 40? 80? 120?
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi!
1. How does AI decides which ship attacks 1st in combat?

Something along the lines of attack / (defenses + hitpoints). So ships with high attack and low defense are usually targeted first.

2. How exactly defense works?

In DL they roll from 0 to their max defensive value for each attack from each opponent's ship, that rolls from 1 to its max attack value. Non-matching defenses roll from 0 to sqrt(max value). If defences roll lower than attack, the difference is subtracted from hitpoints.
drath defender had a beam attack of 19

Are you sure it had attack in beams? Also, with the random nature of combat your cap-ship could have rolled some low defense rolls and lost. That's my biggest gripe with DL combat.

what's a good rule of thumb when deciding how much defense u put on your cap ships in relation to enemy's attack?

I used about 150% of defenses, but always tried to have the maximum number of ships in my fleets, in order to destroy opponents ASAP to lower the chance of those low defense rolls.

BR, Iztok