What are they fighting? Certain ships have abilities that stop you firing though I cant remember which ships or what the specific abilities, or what they entail, off the top of my head.
It was nice the first time I had it happen, my TEC ship caused a ceasefire throughout the entire gravity well, so moved my titan and all my capital ships right infront of their starbase...waited...got itchy trigger finger...waited, then within 30 seconds that base was molten slag drifting through space...all that firepower blazing off at once looked so pretty.