please help: "targeting priotity order" vs ."target type and order settings"?

From what I have gathered...

A combat ship will attack what is within range first. It will use the targeting priorities second and then it will look at its orders.

If you are using strategic combat or automatic turn combat then you'll have a rough time because, no matter what you set, the ships may get a mind of their own.

As I have mentioned in other topics, the AI seems to be rather strict with how it does things, so the main key is likely to try and filter out what you don't want ships to do and keep what will make it what you want to do.

Some settings apparently 'override' others.

The 'default' for Target Priority Order for all default strategies appears to be...

Has Undamaged Weapons
Total Targeted Damage - 150% of Structure
Most Damaged
Strongest at Start
Nearest (Absolute)

I suspect the last 2 could be problems.
Strongest at Start:
I'm not sure about this. It depends on if it counts the strength of a planet as equal to the strongest weapon platform, or if it counts it based on all the weapon platforms, or if it might actually ignore weapon platforms when calculating the strength of a planet.
For now, it is a 'suspect', but nothing more.

Nearest (Absolute):
I think this could be the main problem.
Handy for keeping ships from flying past everything to chase some little ship on the other side of the map, but in this case, we want the attacking ships to fly by everything else and head strait for the planet.

Another strategy idea:
For the strategy Target Priority Order for your planet attacking ships.
Target Type
Total Targeted Damage - 100% of Structure (limits chances ship will excessive overkill the planet)
Has Undamaged Weapons (or yet another Target Type to be on the safe side)
Most Damaged (so after they are done with the planet, they will hopefully attack ships without weapons so they don't leave intact ships for the enemy to repair)
Target Type (again, just to be sure)

Under Target Type and Order Settings put Planet with Colony at the top and set Damage Amount to All Weapons Gone.
To be on the safe side, the second place should be Weapon Platform with Damage Amount set to All Weapons Gone.
Then bases, then sats (would hate to have your 'new' colony blown to bits in the next battle by a remaining enemy station...), then everything else.

(if that doesn't work, just copy the desired strategy and change it to all Target Type, make a few ships single minded planet busters that will ignore everything else until the planet is no longer a valid target)

If all else fails, make a few ships with only Planetary Napalm, not even PD, so it can't attack anything else period and so it doesn't decided to go chasing down enemy units using PD weapons... (in stock, anyways, planetary napalm can only target planets)
Even if the other ships want to play with the enemy ships first, the planetary napalm ships will have no choice but to head towards the planet. (hopefully)