Won't happen. Was considered in development, and deemed to be too micromanaging-ish.

Adding features built on toggles that don't work in the game all the time is rarely a good idea.

it would just open the menu that allows you to switch from default firing.  if you have played Age of Empires II, it is like the "open advanced commands" button by the minimap

not neccesarily, but the concept is the same.  it had formation and attack type commands, tho (as in no attack, hold position, defensive, and aggressive).  all it would do is open the buttons.

Could potentially be easy to implement if you gave every unit toggled ability entities which gave them a buff reducing weapon damage but giving them a passiveWeaponEffectChance to apply another buff to the target which did the things suggested, slowing movement/disabling weapons, so that's not the problem.

The problem is firstly, that would be insanely time consuming, you'd end up having to make at least 6 extra entity files PER unit, & make sure that each & every one of them was balanced & worked fine. Secondly, they'd use up at least 2 abilities per ship, there just aren't enough abilities available, capital ships already have 4. & the third problem is it would be shockingly difficult to micromanage in a game where micromanagement is supposed to be at a minimum.

But if you want to mod it into your OWN game, feel free .

Would be nice anyway Ah well.

Also In answer to earlier the way it worked was right clicking on your selected fleet and you got a little menu

How about giving us the opportunity to actually be in the command deck of any one of our ships? In the heat of battle, we could decide to enter any one ship and control it from there, be it a fighter, a bomber, a frigate, etc, just like Star Trek. The interface does not have to be all that complicated.

Is there anyway at all to switch firing controlls from focus to spread fire and back. (in game)
Since you can mod that setting already, would that not be an easy thing to add to the interface?