FreeOrion

I can not seem to initiate a ship to ship combat, I have armed ships in orbit with enemy armed ships and I have them set to aggresive but nothing happens.

I assume I am doing some newb mistake, hopefully someone can point me in the right direction.

if you're playing an old version, you might not be automatically at war with the AI empires -- check the empires window, which starts out in the lower left corner of the screen. Orange-red 'X' type icon (perhaps it's two crossed swords) will show next to empires you're at war with. If at peace, you can right click on the empire listing there and declare war on them. But if your version is that old, I strongly recommend you download the most recent test version.

Thank you

I also have quite a dumb question. How do you get the encyclopedia index off the page other than pressing the pedia button on the top right because whenever I go into like research or production it just comes up and takes space on my screen when I don't even need it.

Zedster wrote:I also have quite a dumb question. How do you get the encyclopedia index off the page other than pressing the pedia button on the top right because whenever I go into like research or production it just comes up and takes space on my screen when I don't even need it.

The Pedia window summoned and dismissed by the Pedia button is distinct from the Pedia sub-windows in the Research and Production Screens (though there is a bit of messy crossover in topic selection)

The Research Screen totally covers everything else & the main Pedia window cannot be visible at the same time; the Pedia subwindow portion of the Research Screen can be manually shrunk to be pretty tiny, but there's not a way to make it entirely go away (and for a new player I certainly wouldn't recommend even shrinking it to tiny).

The production Screen has a transparent center portion allowing some related interaction with the star systems map & it makes sense to not have that fully covered. The Pedia subwindow here can also be shrunk to tiny if you have a small screen and need to conserve space, but it con't be done away with entirely, and again, for new players, I wouldn't even advise shrinking it beyond readability -- for a new player the info there will be more important than the ability to interact with the starmap while the Production Screen is up (you can always select the desired star system without the Production Screen up, and then pull it up).