thats what i'm doing, just select all fleets and hit that button and you're fit to go but the problem is when a fleet leader gets *stuck* it's an AI pathing problem, that can be overcome with a bit of microing, it's just really annoying when it happens at crucial momemts

Fleet behavior seems buggy to me. Sometimes stuff stays together as I would expect it to (yes I know where the fleet distance button is). Other times it seems totally oblivious. I've had a real hard time getting disciples and Illuminators to stay close to Motherships.

I find that I simply have to babysit my fleets. I don't just tell them to cross a gravity well and then jump; that's disaster. I tell them to move towards the edge of the well, wait until they arrive and line up neatly, then command them to jump. I didn't actually know about the jump-as-one feature, so I'll have to try that, but yeah, I hate that my opponents seem to land an entire armada within 3 seconds and it takes me 20. I think the new patch specifically addressed the habit of ships stupidly running around at bad times, so hopefully that's good.

I ****ing hate fleets.  I've tried and I've tried to like them but I really can't, it just gives you a disadvantage no matter what I attempt.

For a start I don't want my fleets to form some kind of useless formation, if the Fleet leader is bombarding the world I want the rest of the fleet to go destroy the structures, not sit in formation because the structures are out of range of the fleet.  Even loose formation has this issue.

Secondly I prefer my carriers to sit at the edge of the gravity well thanks, what possible use is having them follow the fleet around as they are attacking?  They were just a high priorty target for the enemy being sat in their faces   Leave them with a quick exit if they need and far away from the action.

It's so flipping hard to micromanage a fleet.  Last night in another failed attempt to get fleets to work for me I couldn't even remember how to change the fleet leader.  I set my factory planets rally point to the fleet which works great until you lose the fleet leader in battle and another leader gets appointed, all of a sudden the rally point wasn't working.  I want to take my seige capital out of the fleet to go seige in another gravity well so I click leave fleet and then tell him to move to another planet and guess what?  Some ships start following him...what the hell did I do wrong?

Basically I want to have fleets only have the functionality of Ctrl-number keys but with a nice clickable interface because this whole formation and micro thing just kills the point of it for me.  I normally just use Ctrl keys which works fine but for some reason I keep attempting to get the same thing out of the fleet option and just get frustrated trying.  I just micro the Jump individually or Jump as Fleet arrow thingy when moving them.

actually, the auto-join is an option (I think - I would have to check again) and ships only auto join a fleet if they jump into a gravity well and there is a fleet already there.  then and only then.  

as for the seige capitol ship leaving the fleet thing - you probably either selected multiple ships and didn't realize it, or you moved your mouse immediately after clicking (if you try to click and then switch buttons too quickly, it will register the click on the button you go to - that is if they are right next to each other, like build bomber and build fighter buttons.  I am always screwing up the number of each that i want, cuz i click one and then the other, and then switch back again really quickly)  a simple (but annoying) way to avoid this is to make sure that it registered your click before you move your mouse off the button.

erhgmm, what are you talking about?