Playing again a large 1500 stars with max empires game, went up to some 60 colonies in a slow 15+ hours game but not really enjoying much of it.
I noticed after the last update fleet behavior is much better, freighters are no longer bugging out and idling in space forever and generally fleets being ...

Yes, it's a bit sad but I hope one year from now we'll get a "private sector" area of the game that's actually meaningful, this is basically the only thing that actually separates DW from the other games yet which do fighting much better, in this rendition private sector seems to have been forgotten ...

Do you need to start a new game for changes of beta to take effect?

They're all slowboating at random speed depending on fuel level. I just left them to see what they're doing for several ingame hours...it's dumb.
I installed the beta just now and all of a sudden they started moving towards the planets/spaceports but not engaging hyperdrive at all just slowboating ...

Is this a bug?
I keep having dozen of private sector ships just iddling and slow boating away from spaceports with cargo destined for said spaceports. Not iddling near planets or bases but just slowboating hours on end with cargo/tourists, not doing anything.

And also many times my fleets will just ...

I think the game is simply broken mid to late, had to give up on a 15 hour long game since it was impossible to maneuver anything anymore.
Set my two main fleets to manual and for about 3 hours I struggled to have them gather in one place with all engagement system/nearby and manual options. It was ...

Yeah I think I found what was causing this chaotic behaviour. I improved sensor tech and fleets now seem to react much better to threats. I left sensor tech mostly untouched and focused other stuff, they were still running basic sensors.

See this thread for some further info and excellent posts by Samurai and Scott.

Some quick tips.

1. I would suggest not using fuellers in automated fleets. The game will refuel them at stations anyway, and the fuellers wandering off to do their own thing can cause the fleet to get stuck waiting ...

Hello I'm enjoying this game even though 90% of it is a chore to figure out what works and what not, most of the times the auto fleet AI just seems stuck jumping randomly across the universe.
Such that I had a big defender fleet sitting at my home planet whilst enemies were raiding a mining base in ...