Ships are not auto-picking targets

[Okim]

I noticed that my ships in fleets that received orders to attack a particular ship wont fire at the nearest targets of opportunity even if their target is far beyond weapons reach. Also after their target is dead these ships just sit still and do nothing. More over they wont engage other ships unless attacked even if the enemy is in close proximity to them and is firing at a friendly ship.

Automation does seem to fix this problem - ships do pick targets, but automation is canceled as soon as you order your fleet to move or do any other action and you have to manually reactivate it. This is really a very disgusting thing that makes large invasion very difficult to control. I do not rely on my AI so i tend to play manually, but manually picking targets for each ship is not what i want to do!

P.S.: automated ships behave like shown on this picture. All three ships ignore enemy 002 ship while pursuing other two ships.

[PDiFolco]

I found odd too that you can only a order a fleet to attack a given ship, and not just "engage". .. Did I miss stg about how to conduct manually controlled battles ?

[ASHBERY76]

When you issue an order you take full control of the ship.That is clear in game.

[playedabit]

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

When you issue an order you take full control of the ship.That is clear in game.

Doesn't that make battles with lots of ships rather difficult to handle? I'd prefer to have something in between complete automation and complete manual control.