Is it possible to hold Fighters and Gunships back until a designated time?
Basically I don’t want my Fighters/Gunships to go in to fight other Fighters/Gunships, and most likely be destroyed by heavy fire from the larger ships coming in.
I want to have them help mop up later on in the battle. Say, have them come out when there’s 50% of the enemy fleet left or some other designated time.
I’ve tried putting them on Escort, but they pretty much don’t seem to do anything unless the escorted ship is practically on top of another ship.
What range are you giving them for Escort? As I recall, the max value of the slider is 600, which usually puts escorting fighters/gunships out far enough ahead to do a bit of slugging.
AcePalarum is right. Increasing the default Escort range is a good idea.
There may be another thing going on: refueling
If you don’t put big enough fuel tanks, the fighter/gunship has only a few seconds to attack the enemy before it heads for a carrier to refuel. This is especially true for heavy, slow fighters/gunships (carrying torpedoes, disruptor bombs), since weight is increasing fuel consumption. Putting a bigger (or more) fuel tanks will presumably solve this problem, giving them more time to do their job before they have to refuel.
However, when your fighter/gunship has quite a slow max speed / turn speed and your carrier quite a fast max speed / turn speed, there may be a state where your fighters/gunships cannot catch up to the carrier. (Btw: Fighters/gunships that are out of fuel have their max speed reduced.)
You can easily check if your fighter/gunship is refueling by hovering the mouse over it.