Eliminate sniping, no. We can’t do that since it is just the user controlling units. However, the rebalance should reduce its effectiveness so that it is likely less effective than other forms of micro. Note that this depends enormously on composition and upgrades.
automatically sorting by resistance would be extremely lame as this is automating a part of the game that depends on player knowledge, experience, and skill.
automating this puts way too much control into a “black box”.
in an ideal balance context, the advantage gained from manual targeting will be very small anyway. The benefit of automating it would be obscure for most players, and for experienced players, it would just mean watching a mathematically determined battle outcome, hands free. In battles, I want some control over the outcome this is part of the excitement of 0ad.
Instead of proposing automated workarounds, let’s actually address the root of the problem:
https://gitlab.com/real_tabasco_sauce/0-a-d-community-mod-unit-specific-upgrades/-/compare/main...melee_buff?from_project_id=36954588&page=2&straight=false
In other words, let opportunity cost be the reason to use micro other than sniping.