Is there a way to..?
 

Is there a way to set specific ships to specific spots in a formation? IE: point defense ships put in a decent spot rather than all on one side or in the rabble that follows the main formation? I still put PD on all my ships, but I like to be prepared for a massive missile or fighter attack and have all parts of my formation well protected.

Re: Is there a way to..?
 

You cannot do that in-game. Formations.txt has a field for ship type, but I don't know if that actually does anything or not.

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It's not whether you win or lose that counts: it's how much pain you inflict along the way.

Re: Is there a way to..?
 

As far as I know, the order your ships are constructed determines the order they appear in your fleet (other than the designated leader).

This is one area that really need to be addressed in a patch.
Something like a "reorder fleet" button, just like in build queues, and preferably with a graphic showing the formation your ships are currently set to. (So you can tell that you want a PD ship in slot #5, one square up and two to the left of the leader for example)