Hi all, I can't remember how many years ago I last actually had a ship fire at something, and it seems that I've forgotten stuff.

I've just had a lone spoiler attack my commercial fleet based at Earth, where I had a Monitor ship and an STO based. At first nothing fired back (spoiler was in orbit so in range of everything) - but then I manually toggled enemy to hostile (who knew - it was killing ships!) and the STO engaged, but the Monitor not. What might I have forgotten to do in order to get the Monitor to fire? I attach the monitor specs, but I don't think I forgot any of the basics (weapon, FC, PP)

Denethor class Monitor      2,618 tons       106 Crew       404.6 BP       TCS 52    TH 15    EM 0
286 km/s      Armour 3-16       Shields 0-0       HTK 26      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 2-7      PPV 17
Maint Life 7.12 Years     MSP 193    AFR 27%    IFR 0.4%    1YR 7    5YR 100    Max Repair 50 MSP
Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 48 months    Morale Check Required   

Rolls Royce Hobbit II M-NPE-125T15 (1)    Power 15    Fuel Use 87.69%    Signature 15    Explosion 7%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres    Range 7.8 billion km (316 days at full power)

Lockheed Kinetics Firestreak 20cm HCG V40/C3 (2x4)    Range 128,000km     TS: 2,000 km/s     Power 12-3     RM 40,000 km    ROF 20       
Lockheed Kinetics Pepperpot 10cm CDCG V40/C3 (1x4)    Range 40,000km     TS: 2,000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 40,000 km    ROF 5       
GE Narrowbeam BFC-AM R64-TS6000 (1)     Max Range: 64,000 km   TS: 6,000 km/s    ECCM-0     84 69 53 38 22 6 0 0 0 0
Marconi Spark BFC-LR R128-TS2000 (1)     Max Range: 128,000 km   TS: 2,000 km/s    ECCM-0     46 42 38 34 30 27 23 19 15 11
Hitachi Power PBR R5 (2)     Total Power Output 10    Exp 5%

GE Broadbeam  AS18-R100 (1)     GPS 1000     Range 18.5m km    Resolution 100
Ferranti  AS41-R100 (1)     GPS 5000     Range 41.4m km    Resolution 100

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Warship for auto-assignment purposes

I'm not fully at ease, gameplay-wise, with using small civilian ships with infinite autonomy; it feels abusive. It's acceptable if it's a freighter of 40,000 tons—you can imagine complete recycling of resources and enough spare parts—but here... IDK!

I have the same feeling... I think it is to some degree against the spirit of the game. But... it is up to each and everyone to decide how their world works and it does not interfere someone else's game anyway.

I just use buoy as that is what they are made for rather than using manned stations for such tasks. You can have explorers equipped with a large missile launchers and some buoys and deploy them as you explore or as part of your patrol vessels.

I use 500-ton Pinnace that deploys at the jump point. 10 years of deployment time and some amenities for the crew.

I just deploy a station with a single thermal sensor.
Since it is a commercial ship, the deploy time is moot and nothing ever breaks.
I use small commercial tugs to deploy them at each jump point as I discover them.

Most of the cost of a jump point sensor is going to be the cost of running a ship to place it, and the time spent by the player doing so.  Since you just need to be able to detect a ship making transit, if the sensors are close enough they do not need to be very big.  I suppose at high tech you have to worry about stealthed ships jumping as far from the jump point as they can, but most of the time, the detection a jump point sensor is going to give is the notice of their destruction.

I'm similar. I play with 10% survey speed.

To maximize deployment time per long-term MSP cost, I build fighter-sized surveyors with no engines, 1x survey sensor, 1x bridge, 1x engineering spaces, and 2.5t of maintenance storage.
With duranium armor, I can get 48 months of deployment time on these, and it is pretty rare to suffer a maintenance failure between overhauls.
As armor tech research reduces the weight of armor, I add deployment time to subsequent design iterations.

The bridge is optional.
Without it, you don't get the Survey bonus from the ship's commander, but you can use that 50t for a much higher deployment time.
For example, you can have 170 months and also add 1x Engineer Spaces - Small, while staying under 500t.

I use tugs to move the surveyors around.
The tugs are my standard small tug design that I'm going to be making a lot of anyway.
They have a single 2kt@40% commercial engine and an unladen range of ~60Bkm with typical starting tech (Nuclear Radioisotope with no Fuel Consumption reduction).
Range with the surveyor in tow is ~51.5bkm, and this is almost always plenty for an entire deployment.

I build commercial jump tender stations and deploy one at every new jump point.
The surveyors almost never have to wait for a tender. (Only in those rare cases where the very last survey location finds a jp, and the surveyor is closer than the waiting tender-mover.)
The tender stations are also tankers; surveyors that do run low on fuel can top up at their next transit.

I also establish a small colony in every system as I explore (assuming some reasonably habitable body), complete with a couple maintenance facilities.
When surveyors are due for overhaul, they don't have far to travel--and since only the surveyor is military, two maintenance facilities can handle four concurrent overhauls with starting tech.


Anyhow, long story short, this approach has greatly reduced the amount of time I spend on surveyor micromanagement.
Ship exceeds maximum deployment? Send to overhaul (after finishing current order).
Event says system survey is done? Move surveyors to next system.

Found new jp? Send tender mover and colony establishment fleet from staging point (previous jp), and create and send new tender mover and colony establishment fleet from home to staging point.

I have done similar setup in my games as well, although when I play campaigns where I have four, five or more human run empires I really need to cut down micro and mouse clicks to a bare minimum while still being reasonable efficient. But I have had similar approach as you do, using tugs especially. But eventually I quit using tugs and tractor beams other than to tractor proper stations around, the tractor beam can be sort of abused a bit much. Like avoiding the military maintenance cost for your explorer fleet for example, or dragging around sensor pods, magazines or other parts with regular ships. At one time my "ships" were mostly huge military hangars that I dragged around with tugs and mini tugs that dragged sensor pods around. Ships were not really ships but a series of modules attached to engines or a core ship part.

When you use tractor beams on ships they also become much smaller and harder to detect, especially with cloaking tech as half the ship is attached through the tractor beam.

At the end it just became a bit weird and I decided to stop using tugs like this. I sometimes wished that if something is tractored it should become completely inert and can't be used until you release it, but in general it does not matter as other probably enjoy it as it is and I can just put the limit on myself anyway so no big deal.