<they don't let me post links, so.  .  .  >(Goto wiki, search for "sequence", click "basic sequence of play") shows you the sequence of play.   The interesting bit to note with respect to your thought is that Monsters (including precursors) move after the fleets/fighters movement phases.   This means that they are outside (and after) the normal fleet initiative phase.   In other words, fleet initiative only matters for player controlled or NPR empires.

I believe that this is not the case (that precursors are considered monsters from the point of view of movement) - it's probably out-dated information (precursors used to use different rules for their ship designs).  I have had situations (a year or two ago) where I've had a precursor fleet chasing me for long periods of time; when I changed the initiative of my TG the precursor occasionally lost me, presumably because I moved first and moved out of range.

John

Precursors/Invaders/etc. either do have commanders with initiative bonuses, or have a ship-based initiative rating.  So odds are, whatever your Fleet Init is, it isn't high enough to let you move after.

Er, right. I've tried setting it as high as I can, too, though, which didn't work either - even against precursors and such which can't possibly have commanders with fleet initiative.

You have to set the initiative of your fleet, the default is for an initiative of 100.  You can find it box to set it on the fleet screen (F12) in the upper middle of either the first or second tab.  Higher initiatives move after lower initiatives.

Hope that helps
Brian

Yeah, that's what I thought, but I set initiative to 1, and I was still moving first.

How exactly does fleet initiative work? No matter what I do, I can't seem to get my ships to move after the contacts they're following, which makes it very hard to maintain the appropriate separation when I'm using beam weapons with better range then the enemy ships. My ships always seem to move first, no matter whether I set the fleet initiative high or low.

Higher numbers should move last, IIRC.  If you're not seeing this, perhaps you should post "before" and "after" screen shots with the bad situation displayed.

John

How exactly does fleet initiative work? No matter what I do, I can't seem to get my ships to move after the contacts they're following, which makes it very hard to maintain the appropriate separation when I'm using beam weapons with better range then the enemy ships. My ships always seem to move first, no matter whether I set the fleet initiative high or low.