Yet ANOTHER newby question: Joining fleets

I just select the old fleet and the new ships together and create a new fleet. Most ships seem to have auto join fleet at destination enabled by default.

Note that auto-join fleet only works when the ship is entering the fleet's grav well as its final destination.

For example, you have your fleet at planet and a ship flies through it - it won't join the fleet because its final destination is elsewhere. But if the ship stops at the planet (or is built there), it will join the fleet.

Certain ships do have auto-join disabled by default: scouts, colony ships, and I think the Vasari Overseer?

I usually just highlight them, and then just right click on the fleet icon. Also works directly from factories, just highlight the factory, right click the fleet, and everything produced goes to that fleet.

I usually have to "clean them up" later especially when I have two fleets in the same well. I have to select them all then re-hit the create fleet icon, otherwise they kind of get their own ideas and decide to hang out with their buddies in a different fleet.

Ok, this helps, but I still ask whether or not I should keep them in hold position mode?

The way it works is all the ships are in formation around the fleet leader, and split off based on the fleet cohesion setting. If you set them to bunch up, they won't go around chasing ships much at all. The loosest formation will give them some more room to fly around.

Either way, they're never going to go crazy and leave the fleet leader unless you give them the orders manually (which would override hold position anyway).

So if you don't want them to move at all, by all means set them to hold position, but I find that using tight formation is easier to manage when you don't want them to move around very much, and cuts down on needing to manually target everything slightly out of range.

I haven't had much luck with fleets. Ships seem to move around autonomously anyways, even if I set their tactics to local or hold position...

Lord_Zath, I felt that way too, but when I don't have them, my hoshikas attack head on, which is NOT fun.