[douglas]

Assuming only two combatants, the defender's fleet placement works just like at any other location - ships that started the turn there start near the middle (which just happens to be near the warp point), while ships that just arrived that turn are near the edge of the map in the direction they came from. The attacker, assuming he's attacking through the warp point, starts near the warp point. The defender moving first and the coincidence of the start locations for stationary ships and warping ships being close to each other usually means the defending fleet starts in range and can use its first move to shoot. If your ship started in the middle of the enemy fleet and never attacked, it must have had some other reason why it didn't shoot. Maybe it was out of supplies, or all its weapons were destroyed. If it had no valid reason to not shoot, then you may have encountered a bug.