How and What to Micro?

Micro'ing your Capitals just means you take the time to position them individually and select their targets and abilities manually.

For example, most Capitals do not have all their weaponry mounted on the front, it is scattered around all sides. So in some battles, you would want to manage your Capital to keep it in the middle of an enemy group (particularly militias) so it can use as much as it's weaponry as possible.

Special abilities of many ships also requires a good deal of micromanagement at times. Some abilities can be left on autocast and the AI will handle it fine (Gauss Cannon on the Kol comes to mind) but other abilities, particularly Level 6 abilities you simply have to manage yourself if you want them to have the best effect. You wouldn't want an Akkan with Armistice on autocast and completely halting a battle that you're winning, but keeping that ship ready and easily accessible so that you can deploy this ability when it's most advantageous to you.

You have a lot to benefit though from micromanaging your Capitals, as well as other ships with active abilities. But more importantly, the AI for the autocasting can be weird or very ineffective (having multiple ships use the same ability on the same target, using a powerful ability on a ship about to die, etc.) so keeping the ones you feel comfortable managing yourself not on autocast can save you a great deal of grief.

Ahh, thank you!

One more Q - I line my Cap. Ship in the middle of the battle. It stays there for a bit then heads of after a flak or siege ship across the map. How do I keep ships inplace where I put them?

Theres a menu that lets you control the tactics of a ship to some degree. Can't remember the name of the menu, but the icon is of a finger pointing to the left. In that menu there is a button that lets you control engagement range. It has three settings: gravity well, local area, and hold position. Gravity well is default and on that setting the ship will select a target from any enemy it's in the same gravity well with. What you probably want is Local Area or Hold position. I'm kind of fuzzy on how far a ship will range around when set to Local area. Hold position causes them to stay put and the only movement they do is to bring their weapons to bear against whatever targets may be in weapons range.

Good tip about armistice redmaw I can going to do that manually from now on.

Another useful trick which some people ignore or turn off is setting clarivoiance (sp?) on auto-use for one of the advent ships. That basically allows you to scout a new planet every 40 or so seconds, giving you a good look at the rest of the galaxy. I believe that the ability is only used by AI on unknown planets, so you don't have to get impatient with it and bother doing it yourself.