attack one ship in the stack the revert to standard AI so you got to babysit

I do this to handle those pesky Orgovs when they are sent my way

Ok thanks for the confirmation Ryat.

Looks like I might have to go with the unstacked and use the shift queueing for attacks with ctrl groups. While stacking seems convenient at first glance having to babysit the target stacks is rough when you play with large fleets option and have 10+ capital ships to manage not to mention support ship abilities.

I also wish there was some way to hotkey bombers and fighters.

well I play stacked with minimal tree (in other words most of everything is unpinned from the tree except the one or two hotspots/chokepoints I have to watch over)

I tend to play with unstacked. Makes micro easier for me. Sometimes massive endgame fleets are a pain, though. Or when 5 players are all fighting at the same planet. Multiplayer only, of course.

Yeah the empire tree 'bouncing' can be tough to deal with when fighting large fleet battles. I make sure to unpin virtually everything but even then it can be tough.

I'll try some more with micro. I practiced on a saved 'endgame' fight as Advent vs. Vasari AI on unfair / medium map with large fleets. I found no matter how I tried with stacking, even though I always won the battle ultimately, I always lost close to 400 logistics points of ships (3 caps + oodles of destras + 7-8 guardians). But when I assigned separate control groups for all ship species and unstacked and then microed I lost 1 cap (low level Radiance) and a total 210 points. So I am seeing how big a difference micro can be.

I wish shift-click on stacks had the 'desired' effect of FF in a sequence. Not only would it be much easier on the user but I personally think it seems more practical if I was an admiral issuing orders real-time in battle. Can you imagine the Admiral having to keep continuously repeating: "@!&^@, kill the subverters and overseers!!"  Even better would be the Homeworld group attack protocol. Then you could spend the rest of the time managing cap ship abilities and making meta-level tactical changes.