What did I do wrong?

[Gunner6000]

Im playing as the Tarka and have gone up against the Zuul turn 70ish. Ive spotted a decent size system of theirs I want to destroy. I send in 5 combat fleets on Invade Mission... Combat begins.... 1st Combat Fleet takes the field and receives a double dose of missle fire and all but the 2 supply ships and CnC crusier remain at the end of a pretty epic fight. 2nd Combat fleet takes the... wait... 2 supplys and a CnC? this is 1st Combat fleet.... I run away...... 3rd Combat Fleet's turn right? Nope... 1 CnC and 2 Supplies ready to die.... at this point i say screw it and fly them directy at the planet... They still survive till the end of combat somehow, probably due to the distance I ran w/ them last round.... Combat ends... and Combat Starts... guess what? A totally hosed CnC and 2 supplies w/ no engines.... What am I missing? How do I get my other fleets in the fight? Is fighting at cruiser level tech even worth it?

 

[Tavior]

When you have the screen where you can select auto-resolve or manual combat. You want to select each battle's fleet by change the highlighted fleet.

Look at the top where your solar system location battle will take on. You will see 3 boxes for 3 fleet etc... You want to select one box and highlight fleet 1 in the bottom then pick 2 box and select fleet 2 etc...

This can be bit confusing at first.

 

[stilgarpl]

Before the battle, look on top of the screen. You'll see the square with name of the system and smaller rectangles in it - numberes 1,2,3... etc. for each one of them you can select fleet and everything.