I'm sure this debate is old news but since I missed the early days... why exactly do we 'want' to do this? Why was this mechanic included in the first place? What's wrong with focus-firing?

Either way, the player who micromanages a fight is going to be better off than a player who doesn't so I'm not really sure what the purpose of the mitigation system was supposed to be.

Realism and space games do not mix, go play orbiter!

Why to discourage micromanagement. Explain the intelligence required in force firing on single targets to destroy them faster. Where are the tactics in such? Micro whores will defend it to their dying breath, but there is nothing strategic in force firing.

Mitigation doesn't really do much, it's a broken concept. The concept I like, but reality is 1500 shields really means 4500 shields because the ship is going to be at 67% mitigation the entire time It was stated that it was supposed to discourage force firing, but when you're increasing it from 40% to 60% by having everyone fire at something instead of just one unit, there's not a lot of discouragement going on.

To work as was supposedly intended, one would need to have a more reasonable system first of all. Damage totals only work if all ships do the same damage. It would need to be ratio based, damage compared to shield strength. Higher shields, more damage to get a certain percentage of mitigation. It would need to start out at zero, and move towards 100%. I wouldn't actually go for a 1/1 ratio, 2-1 would be nice though. Just aim for that maximum ratio of damage with a nice penalizing curve that progressively screws you the more you focus fire. After that, all you need to do is prioritize targeting to avoid units all shooting the same one.

It would solve the lack of strategic depth created by having a real time environment.

I understand that this was the intent but I don't see how focusing fire is any less 'intelligent' than the alternative. Letting the ships do their own thing requires no intelligence on the part of the player at all. If the system actually worked as intended, having to micro your ships to ensure that they 'don't' focus fire (which, in my experience, they have a tendency to do in many cases anyway) would strike me as being just as bad.

Seeing as the purpose of focus-firing is removing DPS from the opposing team as fast as possible (and this is still the case, even with the current mitigation values), the mitigation penalty would have to be a 'lot' steeper than it is right now if it were going to have the intended effect. Especially considering that each race has combat repair/shield regen abilities that actively hinder strategies that don't involve focused fire. Repair clouds, Shield regens, Guardian barriers, Robotic cruisers, etc. are all 'much' more effective if the opponent is spreading their fire around rather than focusing on single targets.

I don't know. To me, it's always seemed like an odd fix to something that wasn't really a problem in the first place. What little reading I did on this game before it released always suggested that it was going to reward but not 'require' micromanagement and really, unless combat is taken almost completely out of the hands of the player, the person who jumps in and micromanages is always going to have an advantage.

You mean, like that ship the Advent have? The Iconus Guardian?

Because the unit AI currently does something nonsensical, we should keep focus firing in and useful.

Focus firing is the downfall of real time strategy, period. You cannot replicate real tactical defense when it works. A fortified position simply doesn't exist.

In real life, when people are shooting at each other, they shoot back at the people shooting at them, ignoring someone to focus your fire on one guy would get you massacred. Realism of course isn't a justification for something, but game play is. In a turn based game such as civ, 1/1 casualties are the norm when assaulting a defensive position, regardless of relative army sizes. If you attack 5 defenders with 10, you'll generally take even casualties. Attacking with just 5 would get you nowhere. They'd kick the crap out of you with their defense boosts, and you'd accomplish nothing. Attacking with double their numbers would be a minimalist attack. Something that will usually work, but not always. If, instead, you attack with a thousand troops, you're still going to lose those first five. It's the absolute loss of those first five units that creates balance and tactics. You're going to lose troops, more in one place wont help you after a very finite point. This allows people to use partial forces to deal equivalent damage to a larger attacking force, and also makes the use in a single steamroller attack significantly less so than a multi-pronged invasion of reasonable sized forces.

In sins, this will never exist outside of harassment. A 2-1 battle leaves one side dead, and one side nearly or completely unharmed. You can attempt to outplay someone by not engaging superior forces and just harassing them, but you will never be able to take a small force up against a large force, and do anything resembling real damage.

Then there are the decisions one makes in what kind of fleet to use, and what sorts of things one can actually do with a game. A command cruiser? Poof, 20 lrm frigates shoot it first, bye bye command cruiser. Ok, so you bring a dozen of them to support 50 ships, and they stick around long enough to be more than amusement for your opponent. What kind of a command cruiser is that? You need one command cruiser to use the targeting ability, just one. You need 20 to actually get to use it after the first few seconds. If there were no benefit from focus firing, that wouldn't be true. The repair cloud ability, completely worthless. If there were no focus fire, that wouldn't be true. The balance between longer range and shorter range units that is impossible to actually manage due to force firing resulting in the destruction of shorter ranged units before they even get in range, that too wouldn't be a problem.

Focus fire limits the game. It does not give you something to do in combat, it takes away options. It's been the crutch holding the genre back since inception, the fatal flaw that keeps rts from replacing tbs as a thinking game instead of a reacting game.