no, it has neither of those options (to my knowledge, i will double check the auto join) no formations for sure, just cohesion and attack range within fleets; formations would improve it greatly, nothing fancy just a few simple ones like in homeworld 2. And because of it, i find myself less engaged in battles.

looked for the auto control group option and i am pretty sure its not there... and its most deffinately not a default game setting

Reply: this is the case, however i find that user selectable formations could better suit more tactical battles, and would be better for certain combat applications haha... it could easily be placed over the current system with the automated formation selected by default and make the game much more fun!

Edit: example: being able to select whether the big ships stay in back with midsized ships and fire from a distance, while the smaller ships take on everything up close; or everything stays together with midsized up front big in back, small meshed into everything; or big in front mid in middle and small in back (these are essentially all of the formations in homeworld 2, and their functions.)

thanks, i realize that newly built ships auto join fleet, but i want them to automatically join the control group of the rallied leader which doesn't seem to happen

i guess it will have to do, yeah. i hate the feeling that the rest of the fleet might take longer to initiate an action then the control group (especially jumping.)

i realize that more fleet tactics can be accomplished through a lot of micromanagement with the current system, but i haven't quite reached that point yet, formations seem like they might help.

Yeah, you have to remember that fleets (and fleet manager) apply only to ships that you have made into a fllet. If you have a cap and set that ship as the rally point for a factory, all the ships you build will join the fleet. But, if you want the convenience of a single key choice, you have to highlight ALL the ships and do ctl+#, then they will jump in a group, but they won't show up in the empire tree. We've arg<<< discussed this quite a bit. We voted and the devs won. Kind of like to 2004 elections in the US.

pek

Ooops, that's what I meant.

pek