It's lonely here! (First post!)

[Hunpecked]

The Tessellate race is in the TDM Modpack.

I, too, prefer to fight battles manually. If my ships have a range advantage over the enemy (e.g. PPB vs DUC or APB vs PPB), I can exploit it far better than the AI can. By the same token, however, manual combat makes it much harder to get a challenging game from the AIs, so I've learned to live with strategic combat (with all its shortcomings).

I haven't had much luck with fleet strategies in strategic combat. Using a max range strategy and compact formation, often the first row (only) is in range and the following rows can't fire. With a wide formation, a turn by the leader can put one wing out of the battle entirely and the other too close to the enemy. I've had better results setting all ships to break formation and use their individual ship strategies, though this doesn't always work well, either. Using separate fleets for different ship types may be a workable compromise.