Maybe this is in the wrong section, but it's not really combat, and it's not really mechanic's. So...

Let's say you are fighting a starsucker.
Then, a new starsucker comes in. I've noticed that sometimes, the STARSUCKER reference will target the new one, and sometimes it will continue targetting the old.

So how does it work? I thought it was whatever was highest on the IH list - and I could've sworn that's how the other IRE games worked. But I could be wrong.

Does it preference the highest ID number? The lowest? Whatever's new to the room? Whatever was in there first?

I could test it, but I'm not logged in right now, and someone might have an easy answer Not to mention that I'd like to find out if it's the same on the other IRE games.

it targets the last object in the room.. when a new object walks into the room it is added to the bottom of the list becoming the last object in the room.

So when you target mobs, target by number.

Though i believe the list resets by the last action by the mob, so if Starsucker1 attacks you before you attack again, you'll hit starsucker1 instead of starsucker2. Well it always worked that way for me.

I found that it was inconsistent, because sometimes me and Vix are killing a bull, another walks in, and we keep killing the old one, but OTHER times we end up killing the first one again. It's confusing. I think it's based on the lowest number involved?

I've heard that its the lowest number. Everyone seems to have their own theory though, so its kind of hard to say.

There really is no hard and fast rule. It pretty much just asks the Rapture engine to find the first match, which will return whatever is at the top of the database index. There is no assurance that will be the same thing every time, and if Rapture changes how it physically constructs indices then the behaviour can change. The best rule is to target by number. When I was a player, I programmed a shortcut key to target whatever text was hilighted. So I'd do a quick IH, double-click the NPC in the list that I wanted to target, and then strike the key to target the selected text.

I dislike this about Rapture. It always used to keep hitting the original one even if another entered, before Rapture was implemented. I'm a noob when it comes to such things, all I know is that in Achaea, this changed as Rapture was being implemented.

I have to voice my disdain regarding targetting as it. It's incredibly frustrating as a hunter to be nearly killing an Astral mob, then another walks in, and you automatically target the second one right away even though the first one was nearly dead.

This also applies to nearly everything that involves multiple items with the same name, vials, herbs, and weapons as well. Probing will show the last items on the list even though. I have never had this problem in Achaea with targetting or mobs, it would be great if this was changed so the system would actually pick the first item on the list instead of the last.

We have the same exact targetting routines as Achaea, so whatever happens here should also happen there.

ummm scuse me if I sound like a noob but haven't all IRE muds always run on Rapture since day one?

No.

No.

When I do probe vial on Achaea, it probes the very first vial that appears in my inventory and elixlist.

When I do probe vial here, it picks the second vial on my potionlist and inventory. I think this problem is only associated with Lusternia, not Achaea.

I never had this problem in Achaea. Whenever I targetted a lion, it always hit the original lion whether or not a second one came in. It was only in Lusternia that I noticed this sort of thing. But then again, lions are aggressive and I didn't fight much against multiple targets.

Is it taht hard to target the number? I've always done that in all the IRE games and it always works perfectly! Yay! New smilies!

This is specifically a Lusternia problem. In all other IRE realms, for as long as I can remember (several years) it's gone by the first of the type in a room. With the exception of Schrov'ik in Imperian, it does the same as Lusternia does.

In Lusternia, in my experience, it always goes for the lowest number first. Whether it's multiple items in my inventory, or multiple creatures in a room to kill. Always. The lowest.

#var sHuntTarget ""
#alias t1 {sHuntTarget = "";#tr "iHuntTrigger" {^~"%1(%d)~"} {sHuntTarget = %%1};#temp {^Number of objects} {#untr "iHuntTrigger";#if (@sHuntTarget = "") {#echo Nothing to attack!} {your-attack-here @sHuntTarget}};ih %1}

Yes, it's easy to target by number. (Change "your-attack-here" to your preferred command to start hunting something. Note that this will target the last one in the room, for simplicity's sake. If you're in a group hunt and need to be sure to hit the same one everyone else is probably hitting, you'll need to make a small change, which is left as an exercise for the reader.)

Edit: Since Terenas pointed out "IH " works, I added that above to reduce spam.

Since I just now noticed this... actually it was an update to Rapture to keep people from auto-bashing. It's that way in Imperian too. When there's five things in the room, the target will remain the same, but if something walks in, like Roark says, what you're hitting may no longer be at the "top" of the stack so to speak so you'll be hitting something else. If you've bashed the locusts in Imperian, then was quite painfully (and admittedly, very funny but I digress) apparent when auto-bashers suddenly started dying a lot.

But even without auto-bashing, lazy sod (ie, my Geo) walks into a room with a grub and starts hitting it. F1.... F1.... F1.... F1.... new grub enters.... F1.... EEK! *lag* *splat*

If you can script an autobasher, it's relatively easy to script a target-by-number autobasher.