Bombers should automatically focus fire

[Slamz]

Bombers can seem pretty useless at first but it's really just because they need to be manually coordinated. This should be an automatic feature of bombers (and therefore the AI should do this for its own forces). I just find that if I go with carriers, I spend a lot of time queuing up targets for my bombers -- which I might still do in important fights but, e.g., it would be nice if my carrier starbases would coordinate their own bombers so I don't have to go micro every rebellion that pops up.

(I would also have it coordinate fighters to focus fire if there are no enemy fighters around. Usually I focus my bombers and let the fighters basically just fly around as screens but having them focus fire down weak targets can be effective too.)

Just seems like a basic QOL feature. If you don't focus fire with them then the bombers are nigh useless.

[Jambie Lionheart]

Might be nice if we had a button somewhere that made bombers focus fire on a home ports target or to prioritise attack on particular types of targets.

[Hurricane]

The ai focus fire with their stuff so not sure why the players ai can't.

The ai vas focus fired his 50 ravs to 1 shot all my cobalts early game...

[Korbo]

If you hold 'alt' and right click a target in the fleet panel at the top right with your selected units, your units will focus fire all of those targets one by one. You can combine this with shift queue.

Eg. If you alt+shift a stack of 30 gardas on the fleet panel at the top right, then 30 cobalts with all your units selected, they will focus fire every single garda down one by one, then every single cobalt down one by one. If you don't hold alt and do this, they'll distribute fire between the garda stack until its dead, then the cobalts. Mostly useful if you have something like slow projectile/missile units without retargeting to avoid overkill.

[HappyCamperBubbleBelow]

They don't focus fire, they target closest unit of that type(or some other variable) to them at the time they are told to attack that unit type.

They can be completely random and even go off different directions to attack different unit fragments that have that unit in them.


If you are lucky they will target mostly the same units, othertimes they will be completely random.

Originally posted by Korbo:

If you hold 'alt' and right click a target in the fleet panel at the top right with your selected units, your units will focus fire all of those targets one by one. You can combine this with shift queue.

Eg. If you alt+shift a stack of 30 gardas on the fleet panel at the top right, then 30 cobalts with all your units selected, they will focus fire every single garda down one by one, then every single cobalt down one by one. If you don't hold alt and do this, they'll distribute fire between the garda stack until its dead, then the cobalts. Mostly useful if you have something like slow projectile/missile units without retargeting to avoid overkill.

[Korbo]

No, they do focus them down one by one. You need to specifically hold ALT when you do it, and you need to click on the FLEET CARD of the unit, not the actual unit itself.

It's very, very easy to notice if you do something like spam 400 corvettes and alt+right click on a unit card of a group of 100 whatevers in a gravity well. You'll see them all obliterate one target, reacquire for a second, then obliterate the second target, and so on.

[HappyCamperBubbleBelow]

You are indeed correct.
Swear it didn't work for me when I tried previously, but double checking it does work.

This is great, but it also results in over kill when really massed units, but if you split units into multiple groups it will be very helpful. Still need the game to "intelligently" split units up when say 300 bombers are told to attack a group, so they don't overkill and splitting them into groups is rather difficult.

Originally posted by Korbo:

No, they do focus them down one by one. You need to specifically hold ALT when you do it, and you need to click on the FLEET CARD of the unit, not the actual unit itself.

It's very, very easy to notice if you do something like spam 400 corvettes and alt+right click on a unit card of a group of 100 whatevers in a gravity well. You'll see them all obliterate one target, reacquire for a second, then obliterate the second target, and so on.

[This PC]

Originally posted by Hurricane:

The ai focus fire with their stuff so not sure why the players ai can't.

The ai vas focus fired his 50 ravs to 1 shot all my cobalts early game...

The AI does not focus targets, you might get the impression they do when your ships are all lined up and it happens that for all the skirmishers, the closest target is the same next cobalt.

[This PC]

Originally posted by Korbo:

If you hold 'alt' and right click a target in the fleet panel at the top right with your selected units, your units will focus fire all of those targets one by one. You can combine this with shift queue.

Eg. If you alt+shift a stack of 30 gardas on the fleet panel at the top right, then 30 cobalts with all your units selected, they will focus fire every single garda down one by one, then every single cobalt down one by one. If you don't hold alt and do this, they'll distribute fire between the garda stack until its dead, then the cobalts. Mostly useful if you have something like slow projectile/missile units without retargeting to avoid overkill.

Can confirm this works, I use this consistently with bombers when am targeting stacks, though it's not always good to do so, because like.. If you focus too many bombers on your target ie: You only need 1/3rd of your bombers to destroy a target, you're likely gonna waste most of that remaining 2/3rd's shots.

You can also like.. with bombers, you pick up all your bombers, you hold shift, and then you can make a series of targets they will focus down one after the other, useful to target all of an enemy's caps 1 after the other.

[Jambie Lionheart]

Originally posted by Korbo:

If you hold 'alt' and right click a target in the fleet panel at the top right with your selected units, your units will focus fire all of those targets one by one. You can combine this with shift queue.

Eg. If you alt+shift a stack of 30 gardas on the fleet panel at the top right, then 30 cobalts with all your units selected, they will focus fire every single garda down one by one, then every single cobalt down one by one. If you don't hold alt and do this, they'll distribute fire between the garda stack until its dead, then the cobalts. Mostly useful if you have something like slow projectile/missile units without retargeting to avoid overkill.

No way I had no idea! :O Thanks for sharing. I'mma abuse the hell outta this, lol.

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by This PC:

Originally posted by Hurricane:

The ai focus fire with their stuff so not sure why the players ai can't.

The ai vas focus fired his 50 ravs to 1 shot all my cobalts early game...

The AI does not focus targets, you might get the impression they do when your ships are all lined up and it happens that for all the skirmishers, the closest target is the same next cobalt.

No they did and i know they did there will even be a replay off it saved as it saves all replays!

I was like wtf they are focus firing my ships!

It doesnt happen all the time but they did that game