Fighters don't fight

Check what orders you have on the Fighters....Short Range, Fighter Attack, Optimal, etc.

2nd....May sound odd, but make sure you have weapons on them.

If your ships (and units) fight properly under computer control, you probably just need more practice with the manual control; there is no special technology or component. Note that mixing automatic (computer) and manual control within a fight is somewhat problematic; I've found that once I start taking control of ships in tactical combat, I need to micro-manage the combat to get the results I want.

At first, you'll want to make sure you release all ships from task force and fleet orders once you start trying to override manually, or the results may be confusing. Try practicing in the Space Simulator with some of your ships (or fighters) against an unarmed slow ship like a freighter. Make sure you know what all of the buttons on the control panel do; setting the options so that you get pop-up info by hovering the mouse may be a good idea.

I suggest you turn on the "View movement destinations", View weapons range", and "View targets" display options, using the buttons over the mini-map on the left side.

The very basics of movement: left-click a ship or drag-select a group of them (you should get a rotating white indicator), then right-click to set their waypoint (a white cross in a circle). You need to give them a new waypoint before they get to the previous one, or they'll just stop there and wait for further orders.

The very basics of combat: left-click a ship or drag-select a group of them (you should get a rotating white indicator), click the "Fire all on target" button, then click on what you want them to shoot at. You should get a line that shades from blue at the firing end to red at the fired-at end, and a red star indicator under the target.

Slow combat down to half or quarter speed once ships are in range so you can see how things work, and use the pause button frequently while giving new orders. Eventually you'll be able to fight in real time or even accelerated time, but that takes practice (and for really complicated situations, even experienced players may need to slow things down).

Some things to experiment with to improve your skill:

* Learn how multiple ships move when drag-selected as a group and given a collective waypoint (especially one that is at a significant turn angle from their previous course) versus how they move if you give them individual orders.

* Put a planet into the simulator, with a weapons platform that can't hurt fighters (capital missiles only, for instance). Go in with fighters, select the options that shows weapon ranges, and practice arranging your fighters around the planet just outside of its weapon range. Once you can do that, try it for real; put a bunch of serious weapons platforms on the planet and try to take it out with ships from outside of its range.

* Take command of a ship with mixed beam and missile armament against an easy target, but pretend you are very low on ordnance, and take it out using only beam weapons. (Use "Clear weapon targeting" and "Fire specific on target")

Giving a ship manual orders switches auto-fire and auto-move off. I forgot which button in the orders pane lets you switch them back on, it should be under 'orders' or something. Click around a bit on the orders pane and try to find it. By the way, the window to change this should have a list of each selected ship, 'auto-fire', 'auto-move', and at the bottom it should have a button saying 'set all like this'.

I had a similar problem - fighters would launch then immediately retreat while carrier keeps chasing enemy fighters.

The issue was weapons. I carried rocket pods which do fine against a ship but nothing against fighters. Make sure the weapon you install on fighters will target other fighters.

Dave

Or have different fighter designs for each role. I usually put both heavy fighters (large fighter hull, heavy weapons) and space superiority fighters (small hull, light weapons) on my carriers. The small fighters move faster and can more easily catch enemy fighters or ships that are trying to retreat.