Are Fleet engagements common?

I'm planning to buy the game when the local Best Buy gets it in, but I was reading about the siege frigate tactic and I read there that there were no fleet engagements. Is this true? I want the game to be somewhat like the war in the Pacific where fleets would regularly engage, searching for the decisive battle to destroy enemy naval power, not capture lightly defended planet after lightly defended planet. That was a problem with Medival 2:Total War (in my opinion), because during an entire game where I conquered all of europe. I only had maybe a dozen field battles.