It is only in 1.03 that I spot this problem so I assume it is related to the 'improved' unit AI. In 1.03, the targeting priority of trade ships and refinery ships are raised higher than structures for both fighters and bombers. As a result, the strike craft I brought in my attacking fleet did nothing but chasing civilian ships that are constantly zipping in and out of the gravity well instead of destroying labs, trade posts, refineries etc. It would still be acceptable for fighters to chase these ships but bombers.... that is just a waste of their fire power (and my time issue proper targeting orders).
Manual targeting yielded no better result for me because there seems to be a weird bug for all strikcrafts, especially when they are deployed in large groups. Once the strikecrafts have destroyed the target designated manually, they will halt there and do nothing without resuming to auto-attacking. Contrary to the above targeting priority issue, I have encountered this bug before but the current unreliable auto attacking priority calls for the need of extra micromanagement, which this bug is obviously...well... bugging me.
I am under the impression that the targeting priority of the strike crafts are altered because Ironclad observed a trend of using carrier heavy fleets as a secondary raiding fleet. It would make sense for fighters to go for civilian ships to quickly lower the income of the enemy. However, bombers are absolutely ineffective for destroying these small civilian ships and they are now a source of constant disruption to the normal use of bombers i.e. destroying buildings.
In fact this has brought me the issue of unit stances, currently we are restricted to setting engagement range only, which is a bit a lacking. It would be very nice to have the option of setting attacking priority. As an example, units in the RTS game by 'Rise of Nation' did not only have those typical aggressive, defensive and hold position stances, there are even 2,not only 1, raid stances. One that prioritizes attacking civilian workers, merchants or caravans and the other prioritize attacking buildings. (btw, RoN has something common to SINs. If we are to call SINS a RTS version of GaCiv, RoN is the RTS version of Civ. And I love both games so much) That is to say if we can have unit stances that have different priorities between 4 main groups: 1.Military Ships, 2.Military (tactical) buildings, 3. Civilian Ships, 4.Civilian Buildings. The priorities within the groups should depend on the unit strength, which the devs have mostly done well.
Having multiple stances would have solved my problems with bombers targeting trade ships instead of the trade posts that keep churning them.
Otherwise, 1.03 have made great improvement. I'm so happy that the AI is no longer the coward they were. Thanks a lot.
