I've seen a number of posts now on the difference between "average" encounter difficulty vs the "average" player group and I got to thinking how much in combat discussion contributes to players not actually playing average.
Do your players halt combat to work out a chain of delays to create an initiative order to unleash an optimized combo of actions? Or do they just roll with it?
I've seen both ends and I think it dramatically affects the "average" expectation.
My current group doesn't min max their characters but definitely min max each round and it more than makes up the difference.
This conversation came up several times during the recent free action FAQ debate. It seemed as though most folks agreed that while "I" am not a trained combatant that my character is. So the type of information I might be able to exchange with my buddies in a minute or so could easily be exchanged by our characters with a few words or hand signals. This would be particularly true for coordinating actions and order of actions.
That said, I encourage my group to act along those lines and when they do they are quite formittable, when they don't they look like headless chickens. So I agree that optimization of action is just as useful as optimization of build.
Our group often has had a telepathic bond spell running during combat, which helps justify the party quickly understanding, and implementing IC, some of the cool strategies we come up with OOC.
My players halt to work out strategy a lot. Usually, due to playing characters that already know each other.
I prefer strategy to be discussed in character. Also, I have more fun with battles that have some chaos - a few rash mistakes made. A battle consisting of three rounds of perfectly selected actions seems pretty boring.