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Hello all, I hope you're doing well and having a great day. I have a shooting phase question I was hoping more experienced players can answer for me. Here was the situation:

Space Marine shooting phase Space Marine vehicle selected two Ork units as targets for split-fire of his weapons. Vehicle shot first weapon at the first selected Ork unit.

The player then moved on to begin shooting with a NEW Space Marine unit, his plan being to shoot with that unit, then come BACK to the first vehicle to resolve his second split-fire shot.

He said he can, and it seems like a big no-no to me, but I absolutely could be wrong. I was under the impression that whether or not you split-fire, you must resolve all the shooting for a unit
before moving on to another one of your units to begin shooting. My biggest fear is ambiguity because I can see a few situations rules-wise where this could get out of hand and be cheesy.

We're new players so some resolution to this, preferably with core rules verification (hahah), would be excellent. Thanks for the help!

From the core rules the sequence for the shooting phase is:

Use the following sequence when a unit shoots.
1 SELECT ELIGIBLE UNIT
2 SELECT TARGETS
3 MAKE RANGED ATTACKS
4 REPEAT FOR NEXT ELIGIBLE UNIT

And the first step is defined as:

1. Select Eligible Unit
In your Shooting phase, if you have one or more eligible units from your army on the battlefield, you can select those units, one at a time, and shoot with them. Each unit can only be selected to shoot once per phase. Once all of the units you selected have shot, progress to your Charge phase.
A unit is eligible to shoot unless any of the following apply:
That unit Advanced this turn.
That unit Fell Back this turn.

Emphasis mine.

Hopefully this answers your question.

To translate that into English, a unit must make all of its shooting attacks before you can select another unit to shoot. You may not fire some of a units attacks, switch to a another unit to make attacks, and then switch back to the first unit.

From a procedural point of view the above answer is correct

However from a sportsmanly point of view it is quite common the above happens by mistake e.g. someone fires a lascannon and main turret but forgets to role the storm bolter. I think most opponent's would generally allow there opponent to do what was clearly intended and fire all their guns even if technically they've passed that point its the sportsmanly thing to so rather than gotchaing

The other exception that comes up as a horde player is that I often shortcut with my opponent that I'm firing multiple units at the same target so I will role all of one gun then then next it saves lot of time and most opponents are OK with it

Yes. But there is a world of difference between sportmenship play, expediency resolution, and saving some attacks for a unit to fire after another unit.

 alextroy wrote:
Yes. But there is a world of difference between sportmenship play, expediency resolution, and saving some attacks for a unit to fire after another unit.

Yeah, the OP's post feels a lot more like bad play (whether intentional or by mistake) rather than forgetfulness.