Do you need to micro-manage combat?

[Stryper00]

As the question says, sometimes i think you don´t need to do anything in combat as ships change their objectives in the middle of combat even if their original targets are still alive. It seems that they change to the target most easily to reach. Or not, i´m not sure. What do you do? Moving your ships to the combat and wait? MIcromanaging? Focus fire? Thank you.

[Leviticus]

Well kinda. So Combat AI has priority targets, and even the player's combat AI that governs your units use this, to a lesser extent. Basically,

Corvettes (Marksman/Invader, and Conquest/Frigate) have High priority. Torpedo equipped variants have the Highest priority.

Advanced fighters (Interceptors, Starchasers) Have moderate priority, T models have very high priority, on par with Corvettes.

Medium fighters (Defenders, Duelists) Have moderate priority,

Scouts (Justice, Fencers, and II variants) Have low priority. Capital ships have moderate priority except Unarmed carriers and Triumphs which are low priority.

As a result, if you're engaging a force of moderate priority and a high priority target is detected, your units will try to micro themselves to engage high priority targets. Some things you can do to avoid this is if you put a single fighter group or 2 on NO Doctrine, you then can tell them to engage specific targets AND ONLY those targets while the rest of your force just micro's themselves. To tell them to engage the targets, click and drag while holding control, rather than just control click. Everything in the target area will be targeted, and once the NO DOCTRINE units are done they will just idle until you give them a new command, even if shot by an enemy.

Personally I tend to have a swarm of Starchaser M's and a few Righteous's, with the M's on aggressive and just let them do their thing while I micro the Righteous's set to no doctrine. I also prefer to have the Capital ships not actively targeting a main target, so that their beam cannons don't try to focus on that target if it gets out of range, but rather will attack any available targets like true point defenses. The exception is when I detect a rival capital at which point all my capitals are going to focus on it while the fighters get set to no doctrine, then area target all enemy fighters, and only enemy fighters.

[Stryper00]

wow, thank you, it seems you know a lot!