Preventing Fighters from launching at the start of fights

Edit the Strategy and toggle the Launch All Units switch to false.

All the strategy settings are in the Empire options window.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

The problem with that setting is it's simply true or false... which means either you ship launches ALL its units automatically at the start of the fight or it never launches units at all unless you do it manually.

Which means in strategic games there's a "all or nothing" issue, since you lack the manual control during combat. I wish there was more control of how and when ships automatically launched units, because having my dropships (which are loaded with anti-ship drones) either launch them all or none during a planet capture is rather annoying...