Commands and selection scope

Section titled “Commands and selection scope”

This page follows the player commands Auto Assign FC, Auto Fleet FC, Auto Target BFC and Auto Target MFC of the Naval Organization window, from the selection the player makes to the ship configuration they change. Auto Assign FC, the two Auto Target buttons and the Range x2 checkbox sit on the Ship Combat tab. The worked examples use synthetic inputs, with their assumptions stated.

Weapon and sensor designs are in component and ordnance design, and class construction and loadouts are in ship and station design. Ship power, class and detection covers classification, visibility and recharge, and ship readiness and recovery covers delays and recovery. Space combat resolution owns hit calculations, launch eligibility, point-defence execution and damage. This page explains the configured links and targets, not how those steps fire.

Command Selection the command reads Effective scope
Auto Assign FC A ship is selected That one ship, after which the window refreshes the ship’s combat trees. The command does not process several selected ships one by one.
Auto Fleet FC The selected node of the fleet hierarchy tree must be a fleet Every ship of that fleet. Any other node shows “Please select a fleet”.
Auto Target MFC The selected node is a ship or a fleet A ship resolves to the fleet that holds it. The request covers missile fire controls (ComponentTypeID 25).
Auto Target BFC The same ship or fleet resolution The request covers direct (beam) fire controls (ComponentTypeID 19).
Range x2 Only the fully checked state counts Checked passes a range multiplier of 2. Every other state passes 1.

A fleet’s full ship list holds every ship of the fleet. Its independent ship list keeps only the ships that no mothership carries. Auto Fleet FC therefore includes carried ships, while auto-target uses only independent ships whose class is not commercial. Neither list reaches into other nodes of the hierarchy tree.

Auto-target has no rule for a sub-fleet node, a squadron node or a multiple selection. Selecting a ship inside such a group still resolves the whole fleet that holds it. Selecting the group node itself resolves no fleet, and the command does nothing. Auto Fleet FC likewise accepts only a fleet node. The indentation of the hierarchy tree does not decide these scopes.

The Range x2 checkbox carries the text “Range x2”, and the window sets no initial checked state for it. The command reads the checkbox at the moment of the click. No ship and no fire control stores a range multiplier.

Assignment state and destructive rebuild

Section titled “Assignment state and destructive rebuild”
Stored set Configuration it represents
Fire-control assignments (FCT_FireControlAssignment) A fire-control component and its number (FCNum), the target type and ID, the open-fire state and the point-defence state.
Weapon links (FCT_WeaponAssignment) A ship, a numbered weapon and a numbered fire control. The rebuild fills these explicitly.
Missile selections (FCT_MissileAssignment) The missile type selected for a weapon component and its WeaponNum. The ammunition stock is a separate list, the ship’s carried ordnance, which the selection consults.
Decoy links (FCT_DecoyAssignment) A numbered decoy launcher. The automatic rebuild links it to no fire control.
Unassigned weapon list The Naval Organization window’s working list of unassigned weapons. The rebuild clears it, and so does every refresh of the combat trees.

Auto Assign FC runs the rebuild. It first clears all five sets, then runs five passes. The offensive missile pass comes first, then the point-defence missile pass, the offensive beam pass, the point-defence beam pass and the decoy pass. Existing targets, open-fire flags, point-defence mode overrides, links and selected missile types are discarded with their old assignments.

The rebuild changes configuration. It does not load or fire ammunition. It clears only the five sets above and leaves the carried ordnance and the weapon recharge entries alone. A recharge entry that remains can therefore still stop a newly linked weapon from firing.

Every quantity the rebuild uses is the undamaged count. That count is the class quantity of the component (NumComponent) as a whole number, minus the damaged count of that component when one is recorded. Weapons and fire controls are numbered from 1 up to that count.

The clears belong to the full rebuild, not to the individual passes. Each pass counts the links that already exist when it measures how full a fire control is, so a pass run on its own would not give the same result as the full rebuild.

Beam weapon assignment

Section titled “Beam weapon assignment”

Let T be the AdditionalInfo value, as a whole number, of the race’s most advanced researched technology of the Fire Control Speed Rating type (tech type 5 in DIM_TechType, value held in FCT_TechSystem). The pool boundary is 3 x T. It is not the weapon’s speed and not its range.

Pass Eligible direct fire controls (ComponentTypeID 19) Eligible beam weapons
Offensive TrackingSpeed below 3 x T BeamWeapon set and TrackingSpeed equal to 0
Point defence TrackingSpeed at least 3 x T BeamWeapon set, TrackingSpeed above 0, and component type not CIWS (ComponentTypeID 51)

Equality therefore belongs to the point-defence control pool. CIWS is excluded from the point-defence weapon pool by its component type. The offensive pool relies on a tracking speed of 0 instead and has no CIWS exclusion of its own. These are the literal pool rules, not a general compatibility check.

When a pass has no undamaged eligible fire controls or no undamaged eligible weapons, it ends without placing anything. Within each pass, fire-control designs sort by name. Weapon designs sort by PowerRequirement descending, then by name. Numbered instances ascend within each design. No rule optimises fire-control range or matches the nearest tracking speed.

For W undamaged eligible weapons and F undamaged eligible fire controls, the initial capacity is W / F, rounded up. Some fire controls have the single-weapon special function (SpecialFunction 6). When there are S such controls, S is above 0 and the initial capacity is above 1, the general capacity is recomputed as (W - S) / (F - S), rounded up.

A single-weapon fire control always has capacity 1, whatever the general result. For each weapon, the pass scans the fire controls in sorted design order and ascending instance number and takes the first one with capacity left. Occupancy counts every weapon link that names that fire-control design and number.

The pass creates a fire-control assignment only when it places the first weapon on that instance. Spare fire controls do not get an assignment in this pass. A new beam assignment has target ID 0, target type None, its tree node expanded (NodeExpand true), open fire off, FiredThisPhase false and the point-defence mode Ranged Defensive Fire (PointDefenceMode 2), even in the offensive pass.

Nothing limits a design to its first instance, so every undamaged instance takes part.

When every eligible fire control is a single-weapon control (F equals S) and there are more weapons than controls (W above F), the recomputed capacity divides by zero. The game shows an error (Function #2746) and that beam pass ends before it places any weapon. The rebuild then goes on with its remaining passes. It has already cleared the old configuration and may already have completed the missile passes.

Missile and decoy assignment

Section titled “Missile and decoy assignment”

The anti-missile missile (AMM) threshold starts at 4. The missile passes split launchers by the launcher’s ComponentValue, its maximum missile size (rated as “Max Missile Size” for the Missile Launcher type in DIM_ComponentType). They do not split by weapon name, by the role of the carried missile or by the class main function.

Pass Missile fire controls (ComponentTypeID 25) Missile launchers (ComponentTypeID 22) Mode of a new fire control
Offensive Resolution above 1 ComponentValue at least 4 None (PointDefenceMode 0)
Point defence Resolution equal to 1 ComponentValue below 4 Missiles Per Target: 3 (PointDefenceMode 7)

Missile fire controls with a resolution below 1 are in neither pool. A size-4 launcher belongs to the offensive pool at the default threshold. When the matching pool has no undamaged fire controls or no undamaged launchers, that pass ends and nothing is allocated across pools.

Fire-control and launcher designs both sort by name, and numbered instances ascend. Capacity is eligible launcher count / eligible fire-control count, rounded up. Each launcher takes the first matching fire-control instance whose existing link count is below that capacity.

A new missile fire-control assignment starts with no target (target ID 0, type None), its tree node expanded, open fire off and FiredThisPhase false. The pass supplies the mode from the table above. Neither range nor tracking speed decides which missile fire control receives which launcher. How those modes behave in combat is on point-defence modes, allocation and interception.

For each launcher it links, the pass selects the first entry of the ship’s carried ordnance whose missile Size is at most the launcher’s ComponentValue, sorted by Size descending, then WarheadStrength descending, then Speed descending. The selection does not look at the stored Amount, the anti-missile role, the decoy flag, the sensor fit or the missile range.

When no carried type fits, the launcher keeps its fire-control link but receives no missile selection. Selecting a type does not reduce the stock and creates no recharge entry.

Decoy launchers (ComponentTypeID 71) form a separate pass, sorted by name. Every undamaged numbered decoy launcher receives a decoy link, even when the ship carries no matching decoy. The pass then picks a carried type whose Size is at most the launcher’s ComponentValue and whose ShipDecoy is 1, sorted by Size descending, then MissileECM descending, and adds its missile selection when it finds one. No fire control is allocated here.

Fleet auto-target allocation

Section titled “Fleet auto-target allocation”

Auto-target works on the fire-control assignments and the weapon and missile links that already exist. It does not run the rebuild. A ship with no fire-control assignment of the requested type finds no target.

Candidate condition Rule
System The contact is in the fleet’s current system.
Ownership and observer The contact’s race differs from the fleet’s race, and the fleet’s race is the detecting race.
Freshness The contact’s last update equals the current game time exactly.
Contact kind A ship contact from active sensors. Passive-only tracks, salvos and populations do not enter this list.
Relationship The race’s contact status for it is Hostile.
Usable by the ship’s target search The contact still refers to a ship.

Neither the candidate list nor the allocation sorts by contact strength, size, range, speed, damage or estimated threat. Contacts keep the game’s internal contact order. Ships keep the order of the fleet’s independent, non-commercial ships. The first eligible contact in that order wins.

The ship’s target search measures the distance from its fleet’s position to the position of the candidate ship’s fleet. It then scans the ship’s matching fire controls. Any control with a nonzero effective range for which distance is at most effective range x multiplier admits the candidate. The distance comes from actual fleet positions, not from a stored contact position.

Once one control admits a candidate, the ship’s target search writes that contact’s ID and contact type to every matching fire control on the ship. A short-range fire control can therefore receive a target that a different long-range control admitted. Open fire, mode, weapon links and missile selections stay as they were.

The fleet allocation runs in this order:

  1. Build the list of independent, non-commercial ships and the list of current hostile contacts. If either list is empty, stop without clearing any existing target.
  2. For each ship, run the ship’s target search for the first reachable available contact. On success, remove that contact from the available list.
  3. On failure, add the ship to a list of ships without targets. Then clear the target ID and target type, to 0 and None, on all of its fire controls, including those of the other weapon family. Open fire is not reset here.
  4. Whenever the available list becomes empty, refill it at once from the full original list. Ships can therefore share targets when friendly ships outnumber candidate contacts.
  5. If any ships failed, refill the contacts and retry only those ships. The allocation stops when the number of passes with failures reaches 5, so the first pass is followed by at most four retries. Ships that already succeeded are not revisited.

A failure during an Auto Target BFC request can therefore erase a ship’s missile fire-control target. A fleet with no current hostile active contacts, on the other hand, leaves its old beam and missile targets untouched. These two outcomes follow from different steps, the early stop in step 1 and the failure clearing in step 3.

Effective range and Range x2

Section titled “Effective range and Range x2”

A fire control’s effective range combines the control’s own range with the longest range among its linked weapons. It does not use the shortest, and it does not require that every linked weapon can reach. A fire control with no linked weapons has an effective range of 0.

Stage Range source
Direct fire control ComponentValue, the fire control’s range.
Missile fire control with an existing ship target The ship is looked up by the saved target ID. Range = MaxSensorRange x (target cross section / Resolution)² x 0.75^(target sensor jammer strength - ECCM). The squared factor uses the target’s current cross section and applies only when the resolution exceeds that cross section. The jammer factor applies only when that jammer strength exceeds the ECCM. An ID that no longer resolves leaves 0.
Missile fire control with an existing salvo target The salvo is looked up by the saved target ID. Range = MaxSensorRange x (max(salvo missile size, 0.33) / Resolution)². The squared factor applies only when the resolution exceeds that size. An ID that no longer resolves leaves 0.
Missile fire control with any other target type or none MaxSensorRange.
Linked weapon with a missile selection The total range of the selected missile.
Other linked weapon that is not a missile launcher MaxWeaponRange. When that is 0, DamageOutput x RangeModifier, cut to a whole number. A launcher without a missile selection adds no range.
Final result The smaller of the fire-control range and the longest linked weapon range. A fire-control range of 0 gives 0.

Existing target state matters. The range is worked out for the firing ship alone, before the candidate is assigned. A missile fire control’s range can therefore use the previous target’s cross section and jamming while it evaluates a new candidate. The ship’s target search does not put the candidate in place of the old target for this calculation.

The ship-target calculation can also update the race’s known sensor jammer strength for that alien ship, whenever the target’s sensor jammer strength is above 0. This range query is therefore not a pure display value. The detection side of these factors is in active and passive detection equations, and the jammer knowledge is in weapon, defence and damage observation.

Range x2 multiplies the already limited effective range by 2 for the ship’s target search only. It changes neither the stored component range, the missile endurance, the weapon power nor the later firing step. A zero effective range stays unusable. A distance exactly at the multiplied boundary is accepted.

Retries can change a missile fire-control result. A failure clears the old target type, so the next pass may use the nominal MaxSensorRange instead of the former target-specific range. The available list also resets on each retry.

Open fire settings and execution boundaries

Section titled “Open fire settings and execution boundaries”

Auto Assign FC creates new fire controls with open fire off. Auto Target writes only the target identity. Neither player command opens fire. Assigning a new target to a fire control that is already open keeps it open.

These commands have no separate automatic cease-fire setting. In their paths, fire closes in three ways. The rebuild recreates fire controls with open fire off, the player ceases fire, or damage to the fire-control component removes its assignment. A failed auto-target clears the target identity without closing fire.

The open-fire and cease-fire commands walk the ship’s undamaged direct and missile fire-control instances, sorted by name. Opening needs an existing assignment with a target ID other than 0. Ceasing fire also accepts assignments without a target. The beam-only and missile-only commands, Fire Fleet BFC and Fire Fleet MFC, open only the requested family.

The fleet opening commands, Open Fire Fleet, Fire Fleet MFC and Fire Fleet BFC, apply to independent ships. Cease Fire Fleet applies to all ships, carried craft included. With the game option Inexperienced Fleet Penalties (FCT_Game.InexpFleets) of the Game Information window enabled, a fleet opening command sets the ship’s fire delay (FireDelay) to its standard open-fire delay and marks that delay as applied, unless the ship already carries that mark. The delay itself is in ship readiness and recovery. Auto Target does not run that opening path.

Fire at Will is a separate command, although it filters hostile contacts in a similar way. It picks each fire control’s target by weighted random choice, leaves out hostile ships that carry ground formations of the firing race, and turns open fire on after selecting. Fleet Fire at Will can apply its own inexperienced-fleet delay. Its weights are in engagement targeting and fire control. They do not apply to Auto Target, which takes the first reachable contact.

Offensive firing selects its ships separately. It takes ships that no mothership carries and that have a fire delay of 0, fire controls that are open, have a target and have not fired this phase, and linked weapons that can fire. Recharge filtering and the wait for synchronous fire (SyncFire) happen after that, as described in direct fire and hit calculations. A target assigned with Range x2 can stay configured while the normal range checks stop the weapons from firing.

Worked examples

Section titled “Worked examples”

Beam pool and packing

Section titled “Beam pool and packing”

Assume T=4, two ordinary direct fire controls named A and B with tracking speed 6, and three undamaged beam weapons with tracking speed 0, sorted by power and name. The threshold of 12 puts both fire controls in the offensive pool. Capacity is 3 / 2 rounded up, which is 2. Weapons 1 and 2 attach to A, and weapon 3 attaches to B. This is first-fit filling, not round-robin allocation.

If A is instead a single-weapon fire control, S=1 and the recomputed general capacity is (3 - 1) / (2 - 1), rounded up, which is 2. A receives one weapon and B receives two. Both new assignments stay closed, with no target and the mode Ranged Defensive Fire.

A fire control with tracking speed 12 moves to the point-defence pool. It cannot take those weapons with tracking speed 0 in that pass. A beam weapon with a tracking speed above 0 that is not a CIWS belongs to the other pool, even when its range is shorter.

Missile type and role

Section titled “Missile type and role”

Assume one missile fire control with resolution 10, three size-6 launchers and carried entries X (size 6, warhead 4, speed 10000), Y (size 6, warhead 5, speed 8000) and Z (size 7). All three launchers attach to the fire control, with capacity 3. Y wins. Z does not fit, and Y outranks X of equal size by warhead before speed.

A size-3 launcher needs the resolution-1 pool at the default AMM threshold of 4. Carrying an anti-missile type does not move a size-6 launcher to that pool. An entry whose Amount is 0 is not excluded by this selection, so the chosen configuration alone proves nothing about available ammunition.

Fleet contact allocation

Section titled “Fleet contact allocation”

Assume ships A, B and C, in that fleet order, are independent and non-commercial. Contacts H1 then H2 both pass every filter and are reachable by every ship. A gets H1 and B gets H2. The contact list empties and resets, so C gets H1. Contact size and strength cannot change the order in this example.

If A can reach only H2, A takes H2 first. B can then take H1, after which C sees the reset original order. If B instead has no matching fire controls, it fails, has its targets cleared on both families and is retried with the full list until the retry limit.

Double range and previous target

Section titled “Double range and previous target”

Assume a direct fire control with range 100000 km and a longest linked weapon range of 60000 km. The effective range is 60000 km. A contact at 90000 km fails normal auto-target and passes with Range x2 (120000 km). The command has not raised the weapon’s 60000-km range.

Assume a missile fire control with a nominal range of 1000000 km and missiles with a total range of 800000 km. If an old ship target cuts the fire-control range to 250000 km, the first candidate test uses 250000 km, even for a different and larger candidate. After a failed fleet pass clears the target type, a retry can use the smaller of 1000000 and 800000, which is 800000 km. A candidate at 500000 km can then be selected without Range x2.

Persistence damage and limits

Section titled “Persistence damage and limits”
State What the game saves and restores
Weapon links FCT_WeaponAssignment stores ShipID, WeaponID and WeaponNum, FCTypeID and FCNum. A row is restored when its ship and both component designs exist.
Fire-control settings FCT_FireControlAssignment stores the identity (FCTypeID, FCNum), the target (TargetID, TargetType), OpenFire, NodeExpand, PointDefenceMode, FiredThisPhase, the concentration (PDFireConcentration), the priority (PointDefencePriority) and MinimumAMMRange.
Reloaded fire controls When a game is loaded, the game builds each assignment and restores its saved values if the owning ship and the fire-control design exist. It does not rerun automatic allocation and does not check at that point that the saved target exists.
Missile selections FCT_MissileAssignment stores ShipID, MissileID, WeaponID and WeaponNum. A row is restored when its ship, missile type and weapon design exist.
Decoy links FCT_DecoyAssignment stores the owning ship (ShipID) and the launcher design and number (LauncherID, LauncherNum).

The save holds the resulting assignments. It does not record that they were made automatically, and it holds no Range x2 policy. A load restores weapon links, decoy links, fire-control assignments and missile selections as separate steps, in that order.

Damage to a weapon removes the numbered weapon links above the remaining undamaged count and the matching recharge entries, and also the numbered decoy links above that count. A maintenance failure while firing removes only the weapon links and the recharge entries. Damage to a fire control removes the weapon links of the lost fire-control instances, resets or removes their guided salvos, closes their fire and removes those assignments. It does not move the surviving weapons to other fire controls.

When a ship is removed, the game deletes the contacts that track it, resets or removes the salvos aimed at it, and clears the target ID and target type on every fire control in the game that targets that ship. That clearing does not close fire and does not choose a replacement target. The wider removal sequence is in ship removal order.

Completing a refit clears armour damage, damaged components, fire-control assignments, weapon links, the unassigned weapon list and missile selections before the class changes. Decoy links are not among those clears. The rebuild, by contrast, does clear them.

Refreshing the combat trees of the Naval Organization window can itself create missing fire-control assignments for undamaged instances, with no target, open fire off, the mode None, Shots Per Target: 3 and Priority 3. The refresh also clears a target that can no longer be named in the tree. A refresh after Auto Assign FC can therefore add spare fire-control assignments that the rebuild did not need.

Errors do not roll the configuration back. A missile pass that fails shows Function #2747, a beam pass shows Function #2746 and the decoy pass shows Function #3701. The failing pass ends there, and the rebuild goes on with its next pass. An error outside the passes shows Function #2745 and ends the rebuild. Earlier passes and links placed before the error remain. An error in the ship’s target search shows Function #2710, the search finds no contact, and the fleet allocation then treats the ship as failed and clears its targets.

NPR (non-player race) construction and NPR combat processing also run the rebuild, but their target planning is separate. A new NPR ship runs the rebuild before it is registered in the game. The NPR system-level combat step runs it for each ship of its combat-ship pass, which it orders by maximum missile range, longest first. These uses do not turn the player Auto Target command into an NPR strength-scoring rule. The NPR passes are in weapon assignment passes.

Whole-ship destruction, target-loss cleanup, salvo guidance changes and repairs are on the related resolution, readiness and lifecycle pages. The automatic configuration does not prove a legal shot, a stocked launcher, an optimal target or a successful combat result. Its acceptance checks stop at the component type, the existing links and the effective range.

Concept map

Section titled “Concept map”

Resources

Section titled “Resources”

Related community documentation and developer posts. These may describe a different game version.