I have noticed that something I missed in 1.0 has now appeared in 1.1 - when I assign a group number for a fleet, new additions to the fleet are automatically added to the group. In 1.0 only the ships that were part of the fleet when the I assigned the group are selected when I press 1. So that means I need to re-create the group to effectively use the hotkey, otherwise I'm giving orders to just part of the fleet, and potentially splitting it up or breaking it up.

However there is one small issue with this new behavior, and there is also a small improvement I hope will be considered:

The problem is that when ships leave the fleet, they remain part of the group. It would be better if they were also automatically removed from the group similar to how they are auto-added to it. This wait the group assignment remains loyal to the state of the fleet at any given point.

This brings me to my second point - at the moment some aspects of fleet management are lacking. I would have been happy to see fleets become "more substantial". i.e I want the fleet to be detached from any one ship but instead an entity by its own. What do I mean by that:

1. When assigning rally point on a fleet, Sins actually "cheats", and assigns the rally point to the fleet leader. This in turns causes problems if the fleet leader is destroyed or leaves the fleet - reinforcements start going to wierd places, or just sit in the system where they were created. If instead the rally point "belonged" to the fleet, reinforcements would continue to come in even when the fleed leader is replaced.
2. In similar fashion it is annoying that the retreat command, which I use a lot, when applied to any member of the fleet means that ship leaves the fleet (as it should) but when applied to the fleet leader the whole fleet retreats. When I'm in the middle of a big battle and I want to retreat my cap but continue the fight, I have to remember to take it out of the fleet first, then order it to retreat. This is a lot of micro when you are trying to retreat a cap from battle (or any ship for that matter).
3. There is no easy way to just add ships to a fleet or change the leader without re-creating the fleet. This in turn screws up group hotkey assignments. i.e if I assigned group 1 to a fleet, then wanted to change the fleet composition slightly, by adding lets say ships in the gravity well which aren't part of any fleet, or if the fleet auto-join added ships to the wrong fleet. I have to re-create the fleet. The group assignment now looses connection with the fleet. This problem in turn will apply if my previous two points are taken, i.e you're forced to re-create the fleet -> rally points disappear, etc. Instead it would be better if we could easily add ships to the fleet without having to disband the original fleet, thus preserving rally points and group assignments.