Micro tips

Here is what I do...

I go to my settings file (My Documents\My Games\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion\Setting\rebellion.user) and find this line:

MaxEmpireWindowStackSize 10

Then I change the number to 1000...

When you "stack" the empire tree, it groups like units up to this number...if it's ten, it will group your cobalts by groups of 10 in the empire tree, which I find to be rather useless...by setting it to 1000, virtually all of any unit type can be selected by one click...additionally, you can also select all of the enemies' cobalts or whatever for attack orders...

As far as switching from one individual unit to the next, tab is usually good (it is a hotkey that can be set)...shift+tab goes in reverse order, and is also a hotkey (though it will cause the in-game steam stuff to come up so either disable that or change the hotkey)...one note is that right clicking on an ability toggles its autocast, and this applies to all units selected (assuming they are the same frigate type)....so at the very least, you can disable the autocast of certain abilities in mass....

If a planet has a fleet (and by fleet, I mean you actually formed a fleet using the UI), any units streaming in will by default try to join the fleet...when a new unit joins a fleet, it will adopt the fleet settings of the "fleet flagship" (this is the unit with a white triangle on it in the empire tree...usually a capital ship or titan but not always)...so, if your fleet (again, formed by using the fleet formation button in the UI) is set to hold position, as new units are built or trickle in, they will automatically join the fleet and adopt the hold position...

There are some things worth mentioning in this regard...if, for example, you have 2 hypothetical fleets at a planet, one of your carriers and one of your light frigates, when carriers jump in they will join your carrier fleet and likewise for other unit types...combined with the stack size setting I mentioned earlier, it is fairly easy to quickly form fleets of specific units with their own unique settings...also, try to avoid having a carrier (not carrier capital ship, just a normal carrier frigate) as your "fleet flagship" unless your fleet is only carriers...sometimes these fleets don't attack properly since carriers have no weapons...

Be careful with fleets though, as they also can be a nightmare and have unintended consequences if you aren't careful...for example, if you give an entire fleet an attack order, all ships in the fleet will stop what they are doing (even if they were bombing a planet, retreating to get healed, or in the middle of using a channeling ability...

In general, fleets should be used more for setting fleet cohesion, range of attack, etc and the empire tree should be used for giving attack orders...

That being said, it really all comes down to personal preference...I don't use any hotkeys while playing online which is rather unusual for competitive online play, so other MP players may do things quite differently than I do and hopefully they'll give you some ideas on their executions...those who only play SP against the AI and/or play on slower speeds can "get away" with doing things almost any way since there is no time crunch...

Thanks I really appreciate the reply! I will def be trying this tomorrow when I get into some more games, another stupid question if you set up a fleet from the UI how do you add more ships to it other than having them jump in the grav well and auto join, like to say if I had adjudicators in one fleet and wanted to switch them to another how does that work

Everytime you hit the Form Fleet button, all currently selected units join the fleet...so basically, select all the units you want to be in your fleet, then form the fleet...

There are a lot of fine details with forming/disbanding fleets, and really only practice will get you used to how they work...

I still will stress how careful you have to be with fleets though...it is easy to forget that units are in a fleet, or units may automatically join a fleet when you didn't want them to, or when two fleets are merged, ships retain their previous fleet settings and so you have "mixed" fleet settings (some ships are on hold position while other aren't)...

In some cases, you are much better off not dealing with fleets at all, particularly if you don't expect reinforcements (that you presumably would want to immediately adopt non-default formation details like hold position)...best to practice with fleets and how they work in SP where you can pause or just deal with it if you screw things up since its only the AI...

Good idea I will be trying out some new skills today on SP and I will be much better when I return to multi  one day I will synonymous with the advent rebels and those who see me will fear the fallen angel that is the Eradica the bringer of their destruction!

ok am I dumb or am I missing something I can cycle between sub selected units but if I have 10 disciples how do I cycle through them I'm lost on this, I don't see the hotkey for this

From the main menu, go to "Options"...then go to "Key Bindings"...under the 3rd section, "Globals", there are two key bindings, "Cycle Sub-Selected" and "Cycle Sub-Selected (Reverse)"...by default, the hotekys are Tab and Shift+Tab, respectively, but you can change those to whatever you want...

Is this what your problem is?  Or is it something else?

It may be that you can only cycle units if you start with only one selected...if you select 10 at a time, the game may not allow cycling...I wouldn't really know since I don't use hotkeys but I'd think it shouldn't matter...even if multiple units are selected, one unit is always your "primary" selection (when things are selected in the empire tree, a white box appears around them, and the primary selection has a brighter white box)...

makes no sense I just built 5 disciples you can cycle through each one with the keys tab and shift+tab as you stated but if you have the units stacked you can not cycle through them -_-* which means if I was in a major battle and used repulse on a guardian then wanted to cycle to the next one to use repulse I could not have stacked on which is very fail

A toggle for stacked/unstacked can also be hotkeyed...don't know the default (look under the 5th key binding section, "Empire Window") but a good choice might be the ` (tilda) key (the one above caps lock) since it's close to tab and what not...

thanks for all your help I think I have a setup that works for me now I really appreciate it

There is something else I do frequently when using fleets.

Fleets are important beause it makes sure to keep your support ships close to the rest of the fleet so they are able to use their abilities effectively. For example I play TEC Rebels all the time and Hoshiko's are our bread and butter support cruiser. However if they are not fleeted with the rest of my attack vessels I spend too much time microing them. So I want to make sure they are in a fleet. Then I set this fleet to control group 1 (by hitting Control+1). Uber now when I give move commands they move together and all that jazz. The one issue is, when you give attack orders. I really do not want my Hoshiko's to go and attack a frigate I want killed. I wuold rather have them stand around and wait for someone that needs healing, but if I select control group 1 and tell them to attack it can prevent them from healing when needed. To prevent this I usually make a second control group of just the damage dealers. This way movement orders are given with control group 1 and attack orders are given with control group 2. This is my personal way of preventing support vessels from stopping what they are doing and attacking.

To be honest for guardians I would select them for for abilities by using the battlefield view anyways. Positioning is important for fleet coverage and using the empire tree to select them and cast means you cant be sure where they are sitting. Instead of having two guardinas covering a large area you could end up with two guardians sitting next to each other, both projection their shield over the same area which = wasted AM. But I thought that if you selected a stack on the empire tree and hit the shield key mutliple say three times, it would automatically pic three ships from the stack and have each one of them cast you just couldn't control which three. I could be wrong though since I do not do much macroing of skills using the empire tree.

Hi there.

I have gotten quite used to using fleets, having ships join and leave them to achieve or avoid certain things. Say that I make a control group "1" with my fleet commander so that all other ships in the fleet will follow him, but this commander is also part of a control group "2" dedicated to assault vessels. I order "2" to attack, will the ships following the fleet commander stop what they are doing and try to attack, or just move after the commander as they aren't actually part of the group ordered to attack?

Why not just test it out against ai?
 

lol just alt select the unit type you want-

e.g make bombers attack heavies, fighters attack lights,  circle flak or illums around enemy fleets , attack caps and structures with light frigates and alt select guardians to auto repulse for trolls & laughs.

Oh yes, the old auto-repulse.

Its @$!%&* hilarious.