Attack/Defend Commands-where to start?

[Black_Sails]

I'm interested in trying my hand at modding, having felt compelled due to the major fleet management functionality that seems to be missing from this game.

I'm most interested in attempting to mod in the ability for the fleet ships to actually perform some basic actions-move, attack, defend. I haven't modded before, however I do have some scripting background in general. I've picked through some of the XML files to get a feel for how they are written..but I'm not exactly sure where to start for something like this.

This functionality has to exist already, considering how the stations for example send NPC ships at your location to attack you, or how the police ships are already defending the station. Do any of the more experienced modders here think it would be possible to locate that code and then mold it into a script for player purposes? I'm thinking there must be a way to add that functionality to the squad behavior AI, so they at least fire at attackers.

[Halconnen]

Just looking at it ingame, the commands seem to be tied to the captain and/or defence officer. So the behavior scripts of the ships may be running on the crew.