Talk:Combat/@comment-84.90.161.45-20141205110452/@comment-186.23.201.129-20141218192438

The kanmusumes attack the weaker ships first because, while you as an admiral want your fleet to make it to the boss node and deliver a killing shot to the boss, all your girls care about is granting you victory in that specific node with a victory rate as high as possible.

They'll target the weaker ships first to ensure sinking a number as high as possible and thus at least an A-rank victory. In fact, take special notice of those occasions where you proceed to a night battle in which it is impossible for your girls to score an S-rank, the enemy flagship is still alive, and several of your ships are gunned down without none at 1 HP. You'll notice on these cases how your shipgirls target the enemy flagship A LOT more (because if you can sink the enemy flagship while none of your girls are sunk, you can guarantee yourself a B-rank victory).

tl;dr: your ships know by hand how victory/defeat types are calculated and getting as close to an S-rank as possible is all they care about. That's how they pick their targets. And this is probably why any ship capable of attacking subs will not stop targeting anything else than subs until they're down; because no one else can.