Is there a thread about how to make fleets work? And stuff? Yeeeah.
My current issue is that amount of finagling it takes to load fighters into a carrier. I have to put the fighters of the right amount into their own task group. I then have to go to the far right tab, and put them into a new branch, as well as making sure the Carrier is in a different branch. I then "store" the fighter branch, then assign mothership on the carrier. I then tell them all to land. Repeat for each carrier. I'm getting better at it, but I was hoping there was an easier way.
Also. . .
I decided to take my 2 Carriers with 12 Spitfire IIs, along with a couple of armoured cruisers and a couple of destroyers with good sensors. (At least I think they are good. . . ) into Procyon, where two of my survey ships had met their doom to a ship that traveled 43km/s. . . There were also 4 other wrecks from unknown sources. I figured I'd probably lose all of the ships in a ball of fire, but maybe at least I could get a feel for what I would need to make to take on this ship.
I told the fleet to move to the wreck of the Pliny, and started getting really uncomfortable with how little my sensors really were. I had "active on" on all my ships, and inched my way closer in 8 hour increments. I finally got there and CONTACT! A size 24 missile salvo x8! or something like that. But. . . I can't shoot it. I don't know what I am supposed to do with it. It just sits there anyways. I went and investigated a different planet, came back, contact reappeared, again, I put active sensors on it, tried to find a way to shoot it. Can't figure it out.
Err. . . what am I supposed to do? If I can't seem to shoot this apparently stationary target, how am I supposed to shoot the big bad?
I have missile fire controls, I have beam fire controls for the two beam ships. . . I'm just really confused. If I select a planet as the target then I have a "fire missiles at" option. . . 
Fighter Squadrons:
Open the Fighter Squadron window (F 7)
Hit the "New" button (lower left corner) this will creat a new figher squadron. You can change their name and callsign just by overwriting.
select "Show all race fighters"
Select the newly created figher squadron and double click the fighters you want in there.
Once finished, select "Show current squadron" to check if all the fighters you wanted in that squadron are realy there.
Select the carrier, that you want to be mothership in the dropdown (second line, top left)
Make sure the squadron is still selected and hit assign and then recover.
The squadron is now landed on the carrier (assuming carrier and fighers are at the same place) and in the same TG as the carrier
If you hit "Launch", a new TG containing the squadron will be created.
Note: For "Recover" and "Launch" to work, you have to make sure both, the squadron _and_ their carrier are selected
Re. shooting.
those size-24 missiles are very likely
precurser made capture mines . If you can see them via active sensor and are in range of your weapons (AMMs or PD) you can shoot them.
Open the battle window (F8)
Select the ship you want to shoot
Select the firecon on that ship
select the weapon you want to assign to that firecon and hit "Assign" (you can use <SHIFT> + Left Click to select several weapons or "Select All" to assign all of the weapons to that firecon
If weapon is a missile launcher, select the type of missile to use and hit assign (or hit "Assign all" to assign this missile type to all launchers)
Select the target, you want to shoot at (lower left window) and hit "Assign" WITH THE FIRECON STILL SELECTED!
Hit "Open Fire" of "Fleet Open Fire"
Notes:
Once you have assigned weapons and ammo to firecons, you can hit "Copy to TG", "Copy to system" or "Copy to Race" so this assignment is copied to every ship of that class (i.e. you only have to do it once)
Same goes for target assignment. Hit "Copy target to TG" and each ship of that type will target the same enemy.
