Ever notice how, in the typical RTS, a hoard of units (Scorpion Spam, Zerglings, etc) require micromanagement in order to focus their fire properly? Even then, a player is usually forced by time constraints to bandbox their entire herd, and sequentially target enemies. A waste of firepower in both scenarios. So...What if units could communicate with each other? How could this help? I think best with examples:
Red advances a carrier group onto Blue's planet, with the goal of invading the planet. So we have two lists of combatants, Red and Blue. Red team starts by sorting his enemies list in order of closest to the enemy, and then begins with the conversing:
Red[1] is the lead gun ship, (fighters haven't been released yet), and closest to the nearest enemy, a blue gun ship. Red[1] calculates that it will take five volleys for him to destroy the enemy, and will expose himself to significant return fire doing so. Red[1] examines Red fleet and finds that there is enough firepower to take out that enemy. So Red[1] announces to his fleet that his is now taking bids for a contract on Blue's lead gunship. The contract requires a total of five of his volleys to decimate the enemy in one go.
Next up, Red[2]. Red two first examines the contract board and finds one available (Red[1] did this too, but there weren't any). So Red[2] makes a tentative bid for the contract, offering his firepower as the unit of measure. Then Red[3] gets a turn, and so on through their fleet.
When Red[1] comes up again, he sorts the bids according to firepower (possibly by range as well), and selects the top ones that can make it happen. Then he sends a message to each Red team member who has been selected, making it a binding contract. Then he marks the contract closed on the message board.
When it comes time for a ship to move, it first checks to see if it's in a binding contract, and if so it attacks that target.
Also, if any member of the contract's team loses some firepower (or dies), they flag the contract as 're-evaluate'. the the next member to do evaluations will re-examine if they can still pull it off. If not, that ship announces the contract is null and void, and works on maybe announcing a new contract.
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This thought gleaned from reading
Multi-agent systems, a Modern Approach
Ship AIs that talk to each other
Threaded Mode