but people were also saying how there were no ships scurrying around and zooming places while in battle.
my response is that fighters do zoom around and fire at things, its just the bigger ships, like frigates, cruisers, and capital ships that stay still. this makes sense. when in any sci-fi movie have you seen big ships do tactical maneuvers other than sit and fire at each other? only the small ships dart about. good move by stardock.
I'd like to add that in battles between decent micromanagers, the ships don't really stand still because the players themselves move them. There's a good deal of maneuvering going on in important battles, such as getting damaged ships out of harm's way, choosing optimal targets, avoiding fixed defenses (or "pulling" enemies into them), moving ships with multiple weapons banks to bring all firing arcs to bear and so on. Micromanaging is quite easy in SoaSE (because of its slow pace and shield mitigation mechanic), but still rewarding.