I have questions about fleets.  I am pretty new to the game, and play only single player.  I started playing small maps and the smaller medium maps, and have only rarely felt the need to create a fleet.  I don't micro battles (other than some focus fire from time to time with LRM's on vulnerable cap ships) and don't want to start.  I generally defeat hard AI, but they are an entertaining match for me and once in a while they surprise me and I lose.  I am going to start playing larger maps, and think that with more ships and planets fleets may be helpful to keep things organized, so...

1.  Do Fleets fight more effectively?  If I have a group of ships and send them in to battle, will they do better as a fleet?  Sometimes it seems that the ships in a fleet spend a lot of time "re-forming" (even in the middle of a battle), which (if they can't fight and re-form at the same time) makes me nervous.

2.  What is the best way to form fleets?  I don't mean what ships to put in a fleet, but I just select a bunch of ships and select "Create Fleet".  Is there a better way? 

3.  Is a balanced fleet the best way to go?  Or does it work better to have a fleet of siege frigates, and other more specialized fleets? 

3.  As ships in the fleet die, what is the best way to get new ships into the fleet?  I tend to end up with fleets with hardly any ships in them.

4.  Does it matter what ship is selected as the fleet leader?  Originally I though it should be one of the cap ships, but then if I have to retreat the cap ship to protect it, the whole fleet bugs out if I forget to tell the cap ship to leave the fleet before giving the retreat order, which is not always what I want.   But does it matter who the fleet leader is?  Why?

5.  And if so, how do I get the ship I want to be the fleet leader when I create a fleet?  And how do I switch fleet leaders if I somehow get the wrong leader selected?

Thanks!