[mst]

...when I finally got the auto focus to disengage the manual focus would not resolve on anything...

May I ask how you mean this? When you change to MF, the focus ring (and the distance scale) should move when you turn the ring. Don't they?

Apart from that: From my experience, the X-T30 needs a good target (something with high contrast) to focus on. Something with almost no structure (like for example a huge white cloud) doesn't work well.