It would be helpful if we could predefine ready states for different ship designs.
Say I designate one state "Yellow 1" and want that state to be a cautious defensive stance. I assign all of my laser weapons to my fastest fire control for point defense duty and link my anti-missile missile launchers to their correct fire control, and set the shields to on.
I designate another state as "Red 1" which I want to be a very aggressive state sacrificing defense for all-out firepower. I assign all beam weapons to my anti-ship fire control system, with shields on.
Perhaps other states could be set for a mix of defense/offence, such as "Yellow 2" which has point defense weapons set but no shields, designated as a cautious stance used when no hostility is expected. Perhaps this is the normal state of the ship.
Sorry if this is confusing, it's 3AM here.
States could hold information such as active sensors on/off, transponder on/off, shields on/off, set speed, etc. Would be nice to have a state which sets the drive to lower speed, shields and active sensors off, so you have a ready-made stealth state that takes only one click to apply. I would imagine you would have to set these states per design, as each ship will have different max speed and fire control systems.