So, being a new player, I recently fought my first (and second) battles. Perhaps unsuprisingly they were a learning experience.
Two of my survey ships had been destroyed in a system, so I set to work building a small fleet and sallied forth to do battle. A number of things then went wrong; I learned I had to assign weapons to fire controls, that shields need time to charge up, that my sensor net had a gunboat sized hole in it, and perhaps most annoyingly, my anti-ship missiles weren't fast enough to catch up with aforementioned gunboats. Most of my fleet managed to run back home and I promptly designed some faster missiles and a new active sensor, and refitted a couple of ships.
Round two started well; my new sensors spotted the enemy well before they hit me. Unfortunately, I soon realized I hadn't created a new fire control system. This wasn't the end of the world; they were short ranged too. The next problem came when my ships wouldn't fire. A frantic search let me to discover that the "resupply from colony" does not in fact order your ships to pick up their newly manufactured missiles. . . .
At this point I decided I'd had enough of learning experiences and used SM mode to give my ships their missiles; they promptly shot down the enemy gunboats.
Anyway, all of this got me curious what it was like for other people. Anyone else have a similiar litany of errors the first time they went to battle?