The Iconians are the attackers. They are the ones with enough movement points to initiate the attack. This was 1.4 but I sw the exact same behavior in 1.3.

I did both combinations of attackers and defenders and it made no difference to the fleetsim results.

As I recall there were many people positing that, but when someone finally obtained objective results, the numbers showed that rolls covered the same ranges and fequencies regardless of experience on otherwise identical ships. Levels only affect HP.

Kryo is definitely correct here. IIRC it was SideMancer who did the final statistical analysis. Again IIRC he's a PhD candidate (not sure of his field) and it seemed to me that he knew what he was talking about. The results were very conclusive that level only effects HP.

I'm in the last stage of my current v1.31 game and can easily build ships pretty close to the same specs. I could also gift the appropriate ships to the last AI in my game. The only problem in trying to recreate the battle is that AFAIK you can't gift the AI a fleet, only individual ships. So I know of no way to force the AI to make the "right" kind of fleet.

I could try to find an AI fleet similar to one or the other types, but the AI is only using the balanced distribution type of fleet and none I've seen have enough defense on the smaller ships to cause the BB's to be targeted first.

The only other avenue of investigation that I can think of is the fact that if I remove the defense from the Terran mediums in fleetsim then they are targeted first but it hardly effects the results. This seem counter intuitive, however this whole topic is pretty much about how these results *are* counter intuitive.

Well, that was fun.

It looks like I picked the right answer, but for the wrong reasons. I had considered early destruction of the Terran battleships as a factor, but I'd predicted the Iconian's better matched equipment as being more decisive.

We should do this sort of thing more often.

This was a great test for us ShuShu. It seems I still have much to learn. I also agree with Arilias, we should do this more often.   

Actually, the question about fleetsim remains. I'm willing to try to generate whatever test possible to determine why it didn't predict the outcome in this case. I'd prefer if we didn't just sweep this under the rug.

just a thought... Iwonder what would happen if you eliminated ALL of your opponents ships and THEN gifted himthe fleet one at a time. My guees is that the AI would quickly reform the flett

just a thought... Iwonder what would happen if you eliminated ALL of your opponents ships and THEN gifted himthe fleet one at a time. My guees is that the AI would quickly reform the flett

I have eliminated all of an opponents ships but usually that causes him to immediately surrender. At this point the Thalan have more ships than I do, so it might take me awhile to get there, but I'll keeep it in mind when I do get there.