Thanks, Wolfgang. That makes sense (assuming the "focus-after" timer does not get reset to 0 when the scheduler restarts the job).

No, the scheduler doesn't reset the counter, this is a focuser attribute. And btw, there is also an option to re-align before each job start. This is helpful for those situations where you have a job with the repeat n times or repeat until options set. In this case, for each job repetition, an alignment is triggered first.

Thanks. That is very "Ekos" - a parameter housed in the Focus module, set in the Capture module, and has a sort-of equivalent in the Scheduler module

I did set Align in the 'Steps' section, as losing guiding would result in the target wandering a bit. In the end last night guiding never failed completely - I woke up at 3:00 and PHD2 was hanging on to one last star, trying its best to maintain some semblance of guiding. It looked like clouds from then on, rather than just some passing, so I shut down.

We all in IT business love the explanation of "this has historical reasons"  We already have ideas in mind for a better orchestration, but refactoring is not that easy. But good point though ...