Strategy: Focus Fire

One amazingly powerful aspect of any game is the ability to focus fire. This works in tabletops, First Person Shooters, strategy games, practically everywhere. The idea is this: by using all of your assets focused against one individual, you will destroy that individual and lower the overall DPS (Damage Per Second) of the other team as quickly as possible.

Look at it in this example: 2 teams (red and blue) are evenly matched. They each have 5 players with 5 HP (hit points), and each does 1 DPS. Now, the red team focus fires on one member of the blue team, whereas the blue team spreads out their damage, say 2/2/1 (2 fire at one, 2 fire at one, and 1 fires at one). In the 1st second, blue team is down one man. In the 2nd second, blue team is down 2 men. Now, in the 3rd second, it is possible that the red team loses a man, but simultaneously blue loses their third man. Now it is red's 4 to blue's 2.

At the beginning of the match, both teams had 25dps. If one team were to stand still and not attack, either team would have the other team down in 5 seconds. However, the one that focused their fire was the one who won the match.

Now, if the opposing team has people of differing HP/DPS, then the matter becomes a little more sticky. As a rule of thumb, you focus fire the enemy with the least HP first. However, there is a formula that can be used to determine a persons damage until death while focused. It is ((HPT1 / DPSUS) * DPST1) + (((HPT1 + HPT2) / DPSUS) * DPST2). You can continue this formula ad infinitum to adopt for more targets. In this formula, T# stands for the order in which that enemy would be targeted; T1 = Target 1, etc. US  obviously refers to us. Once the formula is figured, adding in the enemy as variables, then you have to switch the variables up, and check them against each other. The goal is to get the lowest possible outcome, as the answer is the total amount of damage the enemy will be able to deal (given no loss of your own DPS) until they are all dead.

As you can see, this formula is complex, and you have to know a lot about your target, and have time to determine which target to focus on. Since you normally won't have that kind of time, use the rule of thumb and focus fire on their lowest HP person.

   - Sapper Woody