I love my ATM jackdaw, though I mostly farm serpentis/guristas. Sometimes it is really nice to just devote yourself to flying manually and avoiding most incoming damage through piloting skill/speed. It does have some problems, such as initial aggro being necessary, and generally you want to use normal missiles against cruiser and larger vessels. However, the jackdaw offsets those problems with insanely fast reload for missiles which no other ship has, it's such a nice and unique bonus. I have found the jackdaw is a really nice platform for these kinds of designs, lots of flexibility and still very tanky and maneuverable. Also, an interesting quirk of the jackdaw by comparison to the confessor or sveipul, is that the jackdaw base speed modification and agility mod in speed mode makes it capable of 2.x second align and jump. Since anything over a flat number is rounded up for "jump time" it means that it can align and warp out much faster than most ships of comparable size. Mine warps out faster than most of my frigates do, which has saved my bacon when running sights and having scan probes land on me followed immediately by H-interdictor on the hunt. Love the automissile set up, since I have trouble paying attention to that much stuff at once.
IIRC, auto-targeting missiles will check each launcher cycle for the nearest aggressive target attacking your ship and target the volley at whatever that is, hence why you were probably seeing the launchers change targets before killing the one they were originally firing at, since between cycles another rat likely closed range to less than the original target. TL;DR: Pretty certain auto-target missiles sort target priority by range, and don't factor in previous targets each cycle.
it is done by range only, once one frig hits you after that anything is fair game agres or not what ever is closest npc wise will get hit even if new wave spawns they and do not go for you they still keep shooting.
ATMs go after range. Ungroup your launchers, coz its faster. For Cruisers, switch to normal missiles, kill cruisers first, when only frigs are left, back to ATMs. I'm using ATMs with Orthrus / Jackdaw for over a year now. Fastest way to farm Dens / Refuges / Hideaways. For the 4/10, use a MTU in the last room. Snipe the Overseer, switch to tanky mode, profit.
Dunno about other ones, but in guristas 4/10 last room you just facetank everything while killing overseer in sharpshooter mode, then loot and warp out. Guristas damage profile is probably the easiest to tank, especially with caldari t2 resists tho
un group launchers some frigs die with one or 2 shots and when doing ded sites use proper ammo that was what i wanted you to try. thanks for tying it. they always shoot for the closest target auto targeting and it is the lazy man way whilst scanning a system, in a refuge or drone sites time to lock a target you can usually kill 2 or 3 frigs but for ded sites 3 or above i use tech 2 ammo and if you do refuge do normal combat sites whilst scanning you may get escalations. I have a pure bling version have max skills and implants i get another 50 dps and can tank any highsec site like ded 4 and sansha watch then i use tech 2 ammo.
I'm not the only who's saying it, but... UNGROUP YOUR LAUNCHERS. I usually run mine in two groups, which is more than enough to blap Frigates and Destroyers with one, maybe two volleys, Max. You'll clear the site twice as fast and conserve more ammo. I'd say ATMs are fine for grinding and farming anoms for escalations, but definitely aren't ideal for rated sites.
In a week? When I was still doing the sites in highsec I got the billion almost each day. Just sitting there with a Gila and autotargeting missiles doing the job for me.
