Thanks Ramma. I recently played a full sins1 default game with all the DLC over 3 nights. We started with 5 friends vs 5 AI. One that did not really know the game did not start the second night and had to go some time through the first session anyway. No problem the AI took over for him. Second night we had another MIA and thus the last two nights was 3 of us. No problem.
One of my main reasons for playing this game was because a friend wants sins2 I think but does not have the means to get it. So the itch was scratched with sins1 while I told of the cool features sins2 had going for it. But the other reason was to remember what sins1 was like in comparison to sins2 because it had been a long time.
One of the real problems I had coming back to sins2 afterwards was that in sins1 during that game I found it necessary to change the behaviour of my fleets using the above mentioned tools for the reasons mentioned above. In Sins2 I have to helplessly watch my fleet disperse upon entry to a gravity well. My repair ships ending up on the other side of the gravity well while my capital ships desperately in need of repair fight the main battle. In sins1 I can get them to cruise together and support each other by closing the formation. So the fleet operates as a fleet. Other times I want to loosen the formation so ships can choose their targets.
Now you might say that the solution is to focus click enemy ships constantly. But that is not tenable or fun to do. Especially if ships should be focussing on what targets or abilities, such as repair or anti fighter that they are good at. This is where a new feature that sets target priority and even a behavior that allows formation creation. So you can protect more vulnerable ships even during focus fire target selection.
Some good stuff can be found in WARNO as well which the Human and AI may benefit from. In WARNO now you can set unit type behaviours where say in a Tanks case, if it sees an enemy that outranges it so it cannot fire back like an ATGM or helicopter it can be set individually or globally that the tank or tanks if set globaly will pop smoke screen and reverse.