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.
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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.