ORIGINAL: Machaon
You two act like I just suggested auto-repair be completely removed from the game, which I did not. If I deployed a resupply ship and it was suddenly gone when I needed it, I'd be PISSED. The fact that this would be acceptable to anyone is unfathomable to me. Maybe if you're using them in some other capacity besides as forward refuel points, then I could see how having them move about willy-nilly wouldn't matter. I, however, cannot accept my forward refuel points moving around. It can go repair itself after I've undeployed it or I've set it back to auto.
You know, thinking about this as I type it out, this situation is one that probably won't come up terribly often. Hmmm....I stand by what I say though.
Now that I've played the game more, I'm finding the auto-attack function irritating too. I mean they went from one extreme to the other. I think I prefer how it was before. Attacking a single ship of many with a fleet and then setting the fleet to auto, as Erik once suggested, worked fairly well. Now my ships are all over the place! They literally chase enemy ships from one system to another, but never my whole fleet. Instead, like three ships will chase it and get vaporized when they run into a space port. Five ships may break off from a fleet of 20 to attack a space port in the same system, while the other 15 just sit there. It's really weird and I don't like it.
Anyway, I'm not even sure this is on topic with the thread anymore so I'll just shut up now.
The auto-attack on manually controlled ships is, indeed, irritating. If I wanted them to roam about the system blasting every enemy in sight, I'd put them on auto! They should only engage targets that engage them, or are within a very short (<1000) distance of their location. They should also return to their assigned position! It just seems that now it's pointless to use manual control for ships, since they act nearly the same as an autoed ship.
As to your resupply ship, I agree. Manual means manual. It's more than annoying to have the AI override the orders of ships I want to control manually. We need options for us microers that don't like the AI overriding manually given orders.