Once you have finished creating your game, or have joined an existing game, you will be taken to the game detail screen. Here you will see all the details of the game such as who else is in the game and who has been invited as well as all the parameters that were used to set the game up.
Find your name in the list of players. You should see a button for "set initial orders" next to your name as well as "Not Ready". The "Not Ready" means that you are not yet ready for the game to start as you have not set your initial orders. If a players name has "Ready" next to it, then that means they have set their orders and are just waiting on everyone else before the game can start.
Click the button that says "set initial orders" and you will be taken to a new screen.
Here you will see a list of all the ships in your fleet. Next to each ship is an "assign" button. Click that button next to a ship and that ship will now be assigned to this battle. This way you can choose specific ships out of your fleet to take part in this battle. You can assign as many ships as you want, up to the command point limit for the game.
After you have assigned your ships, you need to decide how you would like to engage the enemy. You need to choose from short, medium or long range. This will tell your fleet to try to enter the battle at least 5km, 10km or 20km away from the enemy respectively. You should choose this based on the capabilities of your fleet. If you mostly have slow ships with medium range, you should select short or medium. If you mostly have heavy ships with mass drivers, you should choose long range, etc.
The other component of your engagement strategy is your location. You can tell your ships to try and approach the battle from any of the four compass positions - 00 (north), 090 (east), 180 (south), or 270 (west). You can also set the direction your ships will be facing when they enter the battle. This will *generally* be opposite of the direction you approached the battle from. So if you approach from the north (00), then you will probably want your ships to be facing south (180). But you can set your ships to face any direction you like.
Once you have chosen these factors and clicked the "Set Initial Orders" button, you will be taken back to the game detail screen. Within a minute or two, your status in the game will change to "Ready to start". This means you are ready to begin the game.
If all players are ready to begin the game, the host can click the "Start Game" button to set things in motion.
Next topic: starting the game
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