How does target priority work?

Does it prioritize from the 3 choices top down or take them all into account?

For example, my tower targets this:

-Most Shield
-Most Armor
-Most Health

Does this tower first target a monster with the most shield, or does it total the 3 values? Would it target a monster with 100 health, 100 armor, and 1 shield over a monster with 25 health, armor, and shield each?

If this is the case, does it even matter what get's put below the top choice if it targets most health? Because no matter what it would target anything with health before anything else in that case, I hope that makes sense.

Also do towers communicate with each other? If I have 3 particle cannons next to each other that all target first, will they each fire at the first guy through the portal and then keep shooting at the first guy since they've synced their shots when I start the round? Or would they know that one of them is targeting the first monster and move to the next monster in line? It takes a second for their shots to travel so the first guy is still alive when they all shoot which makes me think they all target the same guy and overkill him hard.

I have tried minimal experiments but I haven't noticed any concrete results.

Rafaeleet replied to How does target priority work? May 21, 2023 @ 1:40:48 pm PDT
Rafaeleet replied to How does target priority work? May 21, 2023 @ 1:40:48 pm PDT

i think it's top down and take all into account

for what i have seen, combining two or three "Most" is not good for most of the towers, unless with the lookout tower i think

For example, i want a tower to hit only green health bar enemies, this is the best priority i have seen:
-Least shield
-Least armor
-Most Health

But if i want a tower to hit only shields:
-Most shield
-Least armor
-Least health

wakasm replied to How does target priority work? May 21, 2023 @ 9:20:35 pm PDT
wakasm replied to How does target priority work? May 21, 2023 @ 9:20:35 pm PDT

Originally posted by Rafaeleet:
i think it's top down and take all into account

Unless something has changed in a recent patch, It's not top down and take all into account.

The order of the priorities doesn't matter (neither does repeating them). The priority system is a score based system.

It will simply score mobs based on the relevant things (through multiplying and dividing the relative stats) on your three priority list and choose one based on all three priorities. Multiple mobs that have the same priority score is then chosen randomly (AFAIK) which is mostly relevant for when you have a group of similar mobs (but less relevant when bosses are in range).

This is from the FAQ, although the dev has explained it in detail (either in the FAQ or elsewhere before).

Priorities are all combined when deciding a target. What you set on a tower's priorities tells the tower what is important. When it's selecting a target it will score every possible target based on all of the priorities you give it and select the highest scoring target.

To answer OP's question

Originally posted by pugdogg55:
Does it prioritize from the 3 choices top down or take them all into account?

For example, my tower targets this:

-Most Shield
-Most Armor
-Most Health

In that scenario, it just calculates a score based on all the enemies in range, what has the most of all three and applies a score. I would assume it would target whatever has the absolute most of one of those three things. So if something with 100,000 armour was grouped with other things that had 10,000 shield or 10,000 health, it would target the amour.

If things tie, as in a case where say 3 of the same mob are in range.... it choses it randomly (unless the dev has changed this in a recent patch as i did notice the FAQ was edited at some point).

Originally posted by pugdogg55:
Also do towers communicate with each other?

I dont think so. I feel like this is noticable with morters the most. But I can't prove it without a tool that let's you set your own mobs to spawn and the order.

DumbNumpty replied to How does target priority work? May 22, 2023 @ 10:39:31 pm PDT
DumbNumpty replied to How does target priority work? May 22, 2023 @ 10:39:31 pm PDT

I tend to have towers in 3's with just the top level set to either most (shield/armor/health) so it swaps between that and progress.
Only other targets I use are 'slowest' with mortars as tend to hit more often, 'marked' when I have a lookout unit near.

It would be great if there was 4 targets and then you could have the highest score out of shield/armor/health/progress hence why I do groups of three with stat type & progress.

Dunno if that is common for most of us.