After a lot of careful study, I believe I've gotten the targetting algorithm pretty much figured out. I have made a handy flow-chart for everyone to understand it better.
for me its kinda obvious... if there is a a player targetted that means u had ur fap out either when pressing it or very shortly before it (lag) and when he wont turn around it means the mob behind you very recently spawned
Very well thought out. However I noticed a missing routine within your algorithm
Just below the "Is there another mob actively attacking the player?" -> No...
should be
"Is there a teleporter that can be targeted at any range?" -> Yes "Target TP even if 1k away."
' ' -> No = then it looks for nice dense cluster of mobs
Yes > Try to climb it
No > Bump into the nearest tree
Climbing hills is a well-known effect of next target (in 3rd person) because it works from the camera POV. Geometry FTW!
edit: also, it select the next target relative to the one currently selected, which explains weird results when using it on the move. Or when drilling a claim (I should lobby MA to decrease the range of my excavator )
What ive discovered is never spam the next target when its not responding. You march to a mob blast then spin around like a deranged ice skater and blast 3 other nearby mobs. At least thats whats been happening to me. And whatever you do never accidentally auto shoot a chirpy in a field of mobs. The result would be hilarious if it wasnt so damn frustrating to have a mob train chewing away at your rearend while your avatar endlessly chases the stupid bird no matter what you click.
The target sequence does not get recalculated in realtime and quickly gets out of order as you move, mobs move and spawn. Especially on Cyrene where everything keeps scuttling about so fast, less of a problem on Arkadia where many mobs like to sit still until attacked or move very little. But I found that using the deselect action just before select next target always restarts it, so you automatically get the nearest mob. I put both actions on adjacent keys and always use them together now. Precisely, I put 'deselect target' on '*' on the number pad, 'select next target' on '/', and 'auto use tool' on '-' to press fingers 3-2-4 in quick succession (easier than 2-3-4 -- ask a piano player).
You forgot you must always select the nearest dead mob even if it is not yours and if there is more than one you must cycle through each one. AND you must target the half dead mob that the player near you is shooting no matter how close you are to other mods. Oh and one more thing, sometimes you must kill all the mobs near by before you can kill the one attacking you