Fleet orders dont work

[Hurum]

I have a Fleet of 12 ships.

I want them to hang out at a nearby independent colony and mug the pirate ships that like to hang out there.

I have them set to manual, give them an order to Guard (Independent Colony "XXX").
I set their engagement ranges (all 3 of them) to Same System

They travel to the system, encircle the planet, and each ship has its current mission to Guard XXX.
A trio of pirates turn up at the planet. 1 of my ships engages it whilst the rest do nothing. The entire fleet is destroyed in a series of 3 pirate on 1 fleet ship engagements.

I can't put them on any automation (like Auto Defend) because I wont have any control on what they defend.
I can't tell them to patrol the system, as they immediately try and patrol the system with their home base.
What does home base do anyway?

I have another fleet being built. Once the first ship rolls of the production line I tell the fleet to guard a mining station in a neighbouring system. The ship received no orders. Soon the entire fleet of 6 ships is built and sat at my homeworld (where they were built) with "No Misssion". The fleet mission is "Guard Mining Station (neighbouring system).

In the Fleet Tactics window, their are 2 sets of numerous settings (Engagement Range, Cautios/Aggressive, etc.) - which is actually in effect?

Do not tell me to RTFM. I have and their is basically nothing in it, or the Galactopedia that is of any use in explaining this.
I feel like I have borderline no control over my ships/fleets unless I totally micromanage absolutely everything which makes the game unplayable due to its scale.

I really liked DWU, and generally felt I knew what ships and fleets were doing / going to do / why they did what they had just done.

[scotten_usa]

I've seen this same behavior (although I think it's been intermittent) and I don't know if there is a solution.... I was hoping a patch would resolve this.

[cwaadd]

That really confused me at first too ! Still do not know why there are several engagement ranges…
The default settings for a fleet should have been different.
The reason why your fleet is getting destroyed peacemeal is because your fleet uses ship tactics rather than fleet tactics.

You should also put your formation to tight or very tight.

The home base is mainly used for automated fleets to define the engagement range : For exemple if you put a fleet to Defend at a range of 33% of Fuel it will do so from its home base.

Sadly i did not find a way to tell an attack fleet in auto to engage everything in a system. What i do instead is blockade a colony, invade it, then set this colony as home base for the attack fleet, put it in auto and set range at same system.
That works well.

PS another annoying thing, by default right click is prepare and attack so if one ship is missing fuel, the whole fleet will retreat and get some fuel even though you are on manual.
Always ctrl right click Attack