Late Addition: Action Scenery (pdf) from Amagi Games perfectly complements the original article below.
From the Fate RPG group recent posts from the post Combat Tips for New GM and its responses.
Work in Maneuvers, Aspects, and use Blocks for more engaging conflicts. Examples:
Combat Maneuvers: Blinding and Choking gas grenades, villains with disarming whip attacks, etc.
Temporary Aspects: Off-Balance. Reeling. Blinded. Distracted. Screaming! On Fire (good one to compel), Distracted (Good use of Deceit to boost a combat action), Buried under rubble (who says you have to limit attacks to people).
Blocks: For example, you have a mobster and some goons stealing a treasure from the museum opening, maybe the goons use machine gun fire to lay down a block to keep anyone in the crowd from interfering. Also remember that non combat skills can certainly be used IN COMBAT. (Intimidate is an obvious one. If a player can get to a phone, I’d see contacting as being just as valid)
From the wiki: Combat and Tactics and Faster Conflicts.
Use Zones and write aspects on the map directly.
Goals: The trick to more interesting combat is to have the goal of the antagonists not to beat the players into submission. Their goal should be to steal something. Or to take someone hostage. Or to distract them while the doomsday device is activated. Etc. etc.
The key to making the fight less static and swing/miss, swing/hit is to have something at stake outside of who can take more abuse. If the goons are trying to get away with the U.S. constitution, you can set up situations where the characters could use overkill force to stop them, but ONLY at risk
of the parchment itself. (What a conundrum) You can have clever shell game tactics. You can have traps. Vehicle chases. etc, etc. In general just beating the players shouldn’t be an NPC goal, just because it’s not so exciting.
Reducing Fate points can also increase tension.
Off Topic: Starblazer Adventures, using the same FATE 3 engine as Spirit of the Century, is off to press. There’s a long preview at the link.