I have been in combat with an AI race that is using sats. They were around a planet and it appears they were launched directly from the planet since the race doesn't have sat launcher ships.
The question is why don't I see their sat in the list in the combat simulator? As a test I started another game and made a sat. It shows up in the list. Thanks.
I think something similar has happend to me. I had attack a planet that had sats in orbit. I couldn't see their information in combat replay and those sats didn't appear in my enemy ship designs. This was in a ver. 1.49 PBW game. Too bad that I don't have the save game any more.