I personally agree entirely with rashad about the fleet according to composition, that would be a really handy way to remember what you intend specific fleets for when looking through them.
For fleet scattering, it would also be nice to have that o and shift o command to find ships awaiting orders, that way if worst came to worst you could find your scattered ships and just order them back to one of your planets rather than having them sit around do nothing or effectively be lost, after all in sf series like Startrek etc ships could still navigate home on their own even if it would take them a long time, look at voyager.
As to other comments, I'll admit I'm feeling a bit more kindly inclined towards the guidedog client these days, especially that now both my lady and I have computers. You wouldn't believe how much trouble hardware specific keys can be, and to not have that hassle is a major help. There are several games I just haven't installed because of their hardware specific keys.
As I said back at the time I'm not a huge fan of the name "guidedog games" myself, but hay I don't really think much to the name "breed memorial" either, and people will know how much I enjoy that game.
As far as self voicing goes, the voice could be a little clearer, but as I've done voicing for games myself I'm not going to argue about this, and playing with speech delay is often a good idea. My personal one major problem with the self voicing is that the developers aren't really taking advantage of the fact that this is an audiogame and not a text game, since at the moment there are so few sound effects, you might as well be playing with text, thus the point of having a game which is an audio game with self voicing capacity isn't' really being met.
for Slj and others having trouble I'll try and explain a bit of how things work, since unfortunately there are so many different methods of doing each individual thing, and the documentation explains them in detail, that it is possibly a little confusing when your learning the game.
The game is played on a 20 x 20 board. In this board are planets, ships and hazards. For each planet you own, you get some more income per turn which you can use to buy ships, thus the first phase is the purchase phase where you decide what ships to buy and which planet to put them on.
After this comes the movement phase when you move your existing ships around the board. Your objective here is to explore the board revealing more planets, colonise planets, and possibly fight off the enemy. Each ship type can move a different number of squares per turn, but only in the cardinal directions, destroyers can move three squares, interceptors, cruisers and frigates two while battleships and colony ships can move just one square.
The most basic way to move your ships around is to go through them with s and shift s, and then just move them with shift and the arrow keys, however this is rather time consuming, so there are a large number of different ways to order your ships, for example if you hit A you can open the autonav menu where you can set a destination for your ship like another planet, or set your ship on scout mode where it'll automatically move across and down each turn exploring the board for you. Hit V on a ship to see if it has an autonav set.
Since you have a lot of ships, a good way of speeding things up is to gather them into fleets. As well as being an easier way to move large numbers of ships around, fleets also offer ships protection from hazards or enemy attacks . Fleets will always move at the speed of the slowest ship, so a fleet with a colony ship will move at one square per turn, even if it contains faster ships like destroyers and interceptors. Just as you can go through your ships and order them with s and shift s, you can go through your fleets and order them with f and shift f You can make and manage fleets with the e key, including adding more ships to them.
After you've finished moving your ships around, there then comes the combat phase, if there is any combat, and finally the placement phase, when those ships you bought will appear on your planets. Your then back to purchicing ships for your next turn.
In the lightning game, your objective is to colonise as many planets as possible, which means first launching destroyers or interceptors to explore the board (use the autonav scout mode). then building colony ships and sending them out, preferably with a decent escort fleet), to colonise new planets.
So, begin by sending an interceptor or a destroyer off with scout mode, though leave the rest of your ships since even after you build a colony ship you'll need some escort.
You should find some nearby planets to your colonies very quickly, make sure to explore the board with the arrows, so in the purchase phase be sure to build a colony ship and place it on one of your planets, preferably one that already has a few ships stationed around it.
Now, you have the makings of a colonisation fleet, find the planet with the colony ship, and hit e, then create a fleet and set it to go to a nearby uncolonised planet, preferably an earth type one if you can since they generate more income.
Once that planet is colonised, you will lose the colony ship, however you should have built more ships in the mean time so should be able to start colonising other places too. You will also notice that with each planet you colonise, you will get more income per turn, as well as earn a bonus, use this to make more colony ships and escort vessels.
Remember, not to send out ships alone since space can be dangerous, and to take note of where the enemy is, though in the lightning game unless your very unlucky you shouldn't run into too much trouble.
hth.
Btw, I'll probably be buying the full game tomorrow after I've been to the bank and checked my finances, since I seem to have pretty much explored all possibilities of the demo so far.
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)