Space Combat Mechanics?

[pyrobit (OP)]

Hi, I was chugging along, and it was all nice, as i was exploring some new star systems, setting up new colonies and expanding .  There was one system where some unknown contact destroyed some of my gravitational survey ships, so i made sure to not travel there and to start building up a military at home.  Fast forward a couple years of Research and development, and I am ready to test out my new Stellar Cruisers.  The foreign contacts travel to my home system of sol, and I launch my missile ships to go and intercept them; however, I could not figure out how to make those ships fire a gosh darn missile.  So they just stood there, and I kept on trying a bunch of different permutations of buttons in the Ship combat interface in the fleet organization window and then iterating through a couple 5 second time periods. 

Eventually, I clicked through 5 seconds enough times to see my ships destroyed, and Earth devastated.  Since my sol system was really the only colony capable of construction, I declared this campaign a failure (unfortunately, in frustration, I deleted a couple years of unsaved progress, so i can't really figure out what i did wrong, or if my ship designs were at fault).

So evidently I didn't understand something.  Before I start up a second campaign, would someone be willing to explain how to engage in space combat mechanics? Maybe a step-by-step would be good, or perhaps just explain the Ship Combat interface In the Naval Organization window, and any conditions that must be met in order for ships to fire.  Unfortunately all the tutorials i can find are on Aurora VB.  Thanks in advance.


Some things i remember for troubleshooting (if you can figure out what i did wrong):
I had active search sensors and missile fire controls on the ship, and I think they were active, because i could see the contacts in the Ship combat interface.  Also, the foreign contacts were well within the Active Sensor range and Fire control range (as i clicked to display the ranges in the tactical map mode).  I pushed Auto assign FC, and my missile launchers were assigned to missile fire controls.  I saw my missile launchers seem to have missiles loaded (it was formated like <Missile Launcher name> #X : <Missile Technology Name>), but I never had an indication of "ready to fire" (that I have seen in VB 6).  I would select a fire control, and a foreign contact, and I would click Open fire, and the fire control would turn from cyan to orange, but wouldn't do anything even after minutes of in-game time.  Furthermore, all of the button clicking never generated anything in the event log.

[Father Tim]

It might be a bug in "Auto Assign FC" --  in VB Aurora that was an NPR-only button that caused endless trouble.

It might also be that the hostile contacts were utilizing tech that reduces the range at which you can fire at them. . . it is not always obvious that this is the case.

There's a tiny chance it was the jump-shock bug, but Steve said he fixed that in the Bugs thread so I doubt it.

Finally, it's possible that crew and/or fleet training was so bad that your fleet was stuck waiting for everyone to be ready for synchronized fire.

[pyrobit (OP)]

Ok, so i opened up SM, i spawned another race on luna and gave it some target practice spaceships. 

It turns out my problem was not assigning a target to my fire control.  After finally clicking the "Auto Target MFC" button, and then opening fire, i was able to launch missiles at the moon.  But that's the only way I found to assign targets to fire controls; it doesn't give you any control.  Is there a way to assign targets manually?

Also, I have no idea what the buttons "Assign Fleet" "Assign Sub Fleet" "assign System" "Assign All" do.

[Scud]

Ok, so i opened up SM, i spawned another race on luna and gave it some target practice spaceships.     

It turns out my problem was not assigning a target to my fire control.     After finally clicking the "Auto Target MFC" button, and then opening fire, i was able to launch missiles at the moon.     But that's the only way I found to assign targets to fire controls; it doesn't give you any control.     Is there a way to assign targets manually?

Also, I have no idea what the buttons "Assign Fleet" "Assign Sub Fleet" "assign System" "Assign All" do.   

Drag and drop the contact from the section on the right to the fire control.   

The assign buttons copy the weapons/FC assignments across their respective scopes.   

So "Fleet" Assigns all ships of the same class in the same fleet the same weapons/target settings, system all class in the system, etc.