@nomad I did experiment with both styles when I first started playing. Recently, I’ve been keeping the default behavior and putting all my big guns in one group set on auto fire. I then just toggle that group on and off and leave the targeting up to the computer, seems to be working.
@Kpop I had heard that carrier spam was pretty powerful, but after trying it out, I don’t think it really is. I had a ridiculous number of fleet wipes trying to get it to work. I finally settled on a fleet of a couple of Paragons and a crazy number of Drovers set up with expanded deck crews/hardened subsystems and spark/lux/claw fighters. Yes I can destroy any fleet in the game, but I’m pretty sure by the time you can amass a fleet like that, you can safely say you “won” the game. Plus, I’m pretty sure a minor tweak from the devs will be able to bring that particular set up back in line with everything else. As for the Heron, I like to think it is possible to play it as a direct combatant. Yesterday, I was able to solo an Onslaught by getting right behind it and was able to solo a Conquest in the middle of the battle line by hiding behind the broken hull of another Conquest (I survived that battle with only 10 hull left, good times). My only gripe with the ship is how OP starved it is. There just isn’t any OP left after you put bombers and expanded deck crews on it.