Way to stop camera auto following ships??

If you view is on a ship you can just press esc to release focus.

Also note the option that either zooms to pointer or zooms to focus.

Camera follows whatever it wants in my experience, no focus required. Fighters/Bombers in particular and I find it quite annoying also.

If you turn zoom to pointer off the both of you will notice a big difference.

There should be a hidden option in your user.setting file to disable the zoom snapping to a nearby object. You can keep zoom to cursor on and it won't snap to focus on a random unit.

One of the game's best features, IMO. Because of the "small" size of even the largest ships, it can be hard to select them at times. So just zoom in when they're highlighted and now everything moving with it is static on your screen. A good idea...

Even if it can be turned off I'd strongly advise you to live with it and get used to it, since if you don't you'll be at a disadvantage IMO.

If you hit one of the arrow directions, it'll knock the focus off of the ship. If you just tap them, your camera will barely move in the process.

If you dislike the auto-focus behavior of zoom-to-cursor with moving ships, you can toggle it in the camera.setting file by changing

zoomToCursorLocksOnMovingEntities TRUE

to

zoomToCursorLocksOnMovingEntities FALSE

Having difficulty finding this file - if anyone is able to offer a directory link example - appreciated

Hoping for a checkbox optoin for this in next update

Vista:
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Setting

XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Setting

Please note that some of these directories are hidden by default. To unhide them, go to Control Panel -> Folder Options -> View and set yourself to view hidden files and folders.

The camera follows selected ships. It does not follow unselected ships. I just click on empty space to deselect everything, and the camera stops moving. You can use fleets to reselect ships, or just do what I do and put a big dragging box over everything when you want to reselect them.

It certainly does follow unselected ships. I do that all the time.

Also, hitting ESC, as previously suggested, does nothing.

What game are you guys playing, anyway?

You could just click some blank space. That's what I do

Is there any chance of this becoming a menu option? The option is great for normal times, but when I do a game large enough to kill my system, I need the camera to be as steady as possible.