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.

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.

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.

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