Less fluid? How so?
Ships will get into range of one another... and sit there, unless you tell them otherwise, and even then they're not terribly clever at bringing their powerful weapons to bear while moving. Homeworld 2 actually has motion during combat, and ships are mildly clever about orienting themselves to attack while moving; not to mention ramming, short range point defense guns, and other things that encourage movement.
Most of the ships in HW 2, particularly the capital ships, sit there and do nothing until ordered to attack; they do fire of course. The only ships that actually move around frequently are fighters and corvettes. Capital ships only move to realign themselves when firing their weapons, since they have to track targets. I don't recall HW 2 having ramming...I suppose you mean avoiding ramming each other. In terms of bringing weapons to bear, I assume you mean they are missing?
This may sound kind of dumb, but that's a huge turn off for me. It may be just me, but I loved sitting back every now and then in the homeworld games and just following a ship as it went through combat. Even though the graphics are now dated from a technical perspective, it still is breathtaking to look at. I had kind of been hoping that this game would be similar in that regard.
The only craft you really followed in HW 2 were fighters, and you can do the same in this game, the it's the larger vessels, similiar to HW 2, that don't move around much.
