most strange. I'd say you need to check, if auto-attack is in fact activated, it's something else than the engagement distance, in the normal unit menu, not the tactical submenu. but I figure you probably already checked that and it would be unusual for it to be screwed up unless you played around with it. most strange.

This effect becomes most noticeable when lots of ships become involved (not just visible ones, but trade ships milling about off-screen, for example). My guess is that the capital ships are programmed to acquire their targets first, and heavy cruisers near the bottom of the list.

I guess I might have to reinstall. I will have a cruiser stopped basically running into other ships and it just sits there unless I tell it to attack.