For some targets, it really isn't possible to autofocus without slewing the mount. It would be nice if there was an option for that module to tell Ekos/Kstars to slew to some "nearby" star above a certain magnitude. In the meantime, I supposed I can do this manually as an step in the sequence, i.e., add a target I don't really care about, have it autofocus, take a short (throw-away) image, then go back to my real target.
I'm going to have to try this. I'm not sure about the sequence of those steps you check off, Track-Focus-Align-Guide. I've been focusing before I run the sequence at all, now I'm wondering if it really does the steps in that order. if so, I'll need to have two dummy steps, One to move to the bright star and align, then a second step to do a no-op move to the same place and focus.