The mystery cast order is deterministic, having a strict order of priorities (that usually goes from high cost to low cost)
And in case of ties, depend on order that you placed the ninja on the field(so I've been told)

So if your opponent's "AI is smart", that's because your opponent was smart and composed a team that would cast correctly.
And if your "AI is totally useless", well, guess who messed up?

well considering I always place my first position first you sir are totally incorrect

According to this:
http://forum.naruto.oasgames.com ... 039&highlight=space
You are the cause of your own problem--the one you place LAST cast first.
Of course, the OP there says it's not working for him, but the others insist that's how it works.

I said, and I quote, "depend on order that you placed the ninja on the field", I never said it is in that order. According the thread I linked, people seems to think it goes by the reverse order.
Edit 2: I also said, and I quote "in case of ties", it is not even established that your 4th position mystery is in a tie with your first (and no, cost is not the only thing, some mystery just have precendence over their peers).

In any case, it most certainly is deterministic, as that's the easiest way to make it. How it works exactly, I'm not 100% sure. The very fact that it uses your 4th position every single time proves that it's deterministic.

Edit: from personal experience of using 2 40 costers on auto in survival, it seems that it depends on the enemy as well. My sage naruto is always prioritzied over my GNW Kankuro at the start of turn 2 regardless of placement order. However after dancing, if my opponent loses 2 or more ninja, then GNW kankuro will be the one to Q his ability over the sage naruto. I have observed this pretty much every single time, so it does seem deterministic and favor certain abilities over others. So there is certainly someways in which you can influence the behavior of the casting with team placement. Thou I honestly can't tell you what the exact rules are, I'd need to see the code to do that.

This post was last edited by PraiseLuka at 2017-5-9 16:53

Well the only take away is the AI is dumb on both sides. I totally feel you though...running Shippuden Sasuke is worthless since he is normally NOT in the first spot yet he always tries to cast second round from the 4th or 3rd spot lol

My advice keep those kinds of short comings in mind when you build your space time teams.

well I have used 5 different teams and its only the current one that always is incorrect in mystery usage, and since it also goes from you normal ninja placement I fail to see how that is even possible. Is kinda moronic to place your first ninja last especially since each time I have made a team which is also usually my main team I set it exactly the same and it always casts mystery in correct order from first placed to last. Whilst I c*e a cursed hidan, bee team and it always casts yo onto hidan no matter what order they are placed. Kinda puts a wrench into your works.
You also realise that the mod says what I have done and to place the ninja you want to go first, first.

This post was last edited by WhoWhat at 2017-5-10 09:31

There are a bunch of consistant rules on how the autobattle AI uses skills. First of all, position/initiative doesn't seem to matter at all. What matters is the chakra cost of the mystery, the order the ninjas were placed/moved, and some special conditions like interrupt/heal skills. The order the ninjas are placed is changed whenever you add a ninja or move a ninja. Adding or moving a ninja puts them at the end of the order. So for example, if you add Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura to your team in that order, you ninja order will be Main -> Naruto -> Sasuke ->Sakura. If you then move Naruto to another spot (or move him and then move him back if you want to change your order but keep the same formation), your new order will be Main -> Sasuke ->Sakura -> Naruto. This order is also the order the ninjas will do their start of combat effects, like clones and shields/buffs, which is important if youre trying to get certain clone setups or have shields hit clones.

Mysteries get cast by the AI using this priority:
1. Chakra cost (high -> low)
2. If skills with the same chakra cost can be used, they will be used in reverse ninja order

These are the general rules for most mysteries. Interrupt mysteries behave differently. It will save chakra for them initially (didn't do enough testing to figure out exactly how long it'll wait, but it seems to usually be around when move 2 starts/ends) and use them at the highest priority if the enemy uses a skill. Otherwise they will be used at the lowest priority. So roughly:

0. Interrupt skill (if the enemy is using a mystery)
1. Chakra cost (high -> low)
2. If skills with the same chakra cost can be used, they will be used in reverse ninja order
3. Interrupt skill (if the enemy is not using a mystery)

Support skills (heals, revives, etc.) will be cast when they will do something (not sure on priority). This is a pretty general description of how they work, but it's enough for most lineups that just want mysteries cast in a certain order.

If you post your team and say what you're trying to accomplish mystery-wise, I can probably figure out how to make that happen. If it's just having your pos 1 cast it's mystery instead of your pos 4, just move your pos 1 to another space and move it back (to put it at the end of the ninja order).

EDIT: Also want to echo the above comments that there are a lot of small nuances that may cause skill to go off not in this order, this was just a very general order (mostly for damage skills).

EDIT 2: Fixed a big typo - chakra cost is high -> low, not low -> high
This post was last edited by cra***@gmail.com at 2017-5-10 11:00

As I've mentioned earlier, AI prefers my sage naruto over my GNW kankuro when enemy have a full team while prefer GNW Kankuro over sage naruto when enemy only have 1 or 2 member left. Placement doesn't matter (and I actually do know my placement order, in order to control clone spawn locations), cost are the same.

So mystery priority before the "tie breaker" of placement order does exist. Exactly what is prioritized thou, I have no idea.

Also, I think barrier skills have higher priority than most regular skills too, not 100% sure on that thou.

Yeah there's definitely an AoE/Single target factor in the mysteries that has a higher priority than the chakra cost (easy to see against single Kakashi clone vs team of Kakashi clones...stuff like Suigetsu and Baki mystery will be used over 40 cost mysteries on a single target on turn 2).

For some reason GNW Kankuro's mystery is considered a single target skill priority wise. I'm guessing it's because of the other part of the mystery that re-summons the puppet, and it's treating the attack part the same way (even if it really shouldn't).

EDIT: GNW Tenten's mystery also seems to be treated as a "single target priority" skill, which is weirder, and I have no good guess as to why it does that lol. This post was last edited by cra***@gmail.com at 2017-5-10 11:45

Maybe is because gnw kankuro mystery add a bad status while sage naruto one doesn't do. The ai thinks is better to depower them than to try to direct kill them.

The debuff is applied to all enemies thou, so won't that decision be regardless of how many enemy are left? as it were, if there are 4 left, it will use sage naruto instead.

The mislabeling of his ability as a single target ability seems more reasonable to me. Or perhaps it's defaulted as puppet summoning, and AoE in general have a low priority when there is few targets so both single target and summoning like kankuro(and maybe kabuto) take precedence.

The first placed goes first is not really that true, for me at least. I run Tobi, Hashirama and Fire Main with the Mirror Vision, I placed Tobi the first in my team and yet, when I see an Iruka in Space Time, he will always target my main, even if I have 3 masteries going off, but maybe Iruka's targeting is special too. Also, the AI seems to target the character with the least HP first. Chase skills which have an interrupt or immobile don't count as something special though. Even if I could interrupt someone with Hashirama's chase, I often see the AI targeting the person with the least HP, regardless if that character actually does a skill cast. And every healing/shielding jutsu will go off as soon as someone gets damaged even by 1 dmg(for heals) or as soon as they are available(for shields). Although, these are my own observations

But on a side note. As a newbie programmer, I find making an action list made by each player for auto play A LOT EASIER to code and more simple for us. If they made auto play, at least give us some sort of guide on how this thing works.

But I digress, if we figure it out maybe we could make a forum post explaining how this thing works precisely

and yet when I place my Mifune first he never uses his mystery first, is always the last position that goes first which is darui, same amount of chakra for mystery.
And being in top 15 of my bracket in space time I cant afford that
1 bad move means a loss and you all know that.
I do have a very non meta team though but still it shouldnt mean that my mystery casts all weird.
Fiirst team works perfect every time yet second team wants to use Darui first.

with the same placement do this:
1: drag and drop darui
2: drag and drop ay
3: drag and drop main
4: drag and drop mifune
.....

when you do that try it on kakashi clone and set in auto, darui will cast his buffs first before the round starts followed by ay then main and lastly mifune. if ever you set main mastery to lightning armor, by doing what i said above he will cast it first before ay. the next round mifune will cast his mastery first 100%.

Same problem here hahah i already made my main use lightning armor in 1st move so that wb asuma in 2nd move can cast after but darui in 4th move just cast mystery WOW

*cast wall of text no jutsu!*

you need to drag and drop all 4 ninjas in order so that you can control who cast first who on automatic battle.

drag and drop move 4 followed by move 3 then move 2 and lastly move 1, if you do this move 1 will surely cast first whenever its mastery is available and has enough chakra to do so before its auto attack. just remember that as long as the move in priority has enough chakra to cast his skill(example 40 chakra), it doesnt matter if the next ninja in priority after him consumes less chakra that him (example 0 chakra), the priority ninja who cast mastery for 40 chakra will cast first, followed by the next in priority which needs 0 chakra). best example to test this is use two ninjas, main with round 1 skill and a ninja with 0 cd 0 chakra skill(killer bee, gakkido), go and move gakkido or killer bee or any ninja with 0 cd 0 chakra first(drag and drop him), then drag and drop your main with 0 cd 20 or 40 chakra round 1 skill, you main will cast first before gakkido or whoever that 0 cd 0chakra ninja that is.

You mean like this?
X X X
Iruka Main
Darui WB Asuma X

I don't have Mifune/Darui so I can't test it, but try your team on auto (after making sure to set them like the person below you said) vs the Kakashi clone solo and then a team of Kakashi clones. If Darui is casting first against the team but Mifune is casting first against the solo Kakashi, that means the game is considering Mifune's mystery as a "single target priority." If that's the case, I'm not sure if there is a way to stop the auto battle AI from casting Darui > Mifune when facing a full team of enemies (like on round 2 of the fight).

Otherwise the setup that was posted should work.

In order,
Move Darui to another spot on the formation grid and then back to where you want him
Move WB Asuma to another spot on the formation grid and then back to where you want him

WB Asuma should now cast his mystery before Darui, unless Darui's mystery has some hidden priority rules.

AI prioritizes debuff or interrupt mysteries first. in order for your first slot ninja to go first it would have to be a lower cost skill or of higher debuff quality. Positioning and placement order only matters when it comes to which ninja gets shielded or who gets a buffing mystery( I.e. Bee's myst). Aside from that you have to build well rounded comps in order for your AI to function properly. Best example is my Earth main Onoki team. AI prioritizes onoki's myst first simply because it deletes people from the field which would be considered a higher debuff status the my earth mains hulk smash mystery.