ok, so far so good. after using advice i got from you guys and reading over the tutorials and practicing i've made up 3 flying missions. now they were all landing on dry land so i'm wanting to land on a carrier and bomb a ship. and everything sets up right except, i can't get the ship to move. ya see, when i set a ship on the map and try to set a waypoint, there aint a "set" button to click on. for planes yes, i can set waypoints everytime. just not for ships.

Set is not to place waypoints.

SET (on planes) is to designate a target. Placing waypoints is done by control clicking.

Have you checked that you are using 'ships' and not 'stationary ships?'
Thats also a frequent mistake - obviously, a stationary ship can not be given waypoints...

You cannot "set" targets for ships.
Ships will fire at any "enemy" target within range (line of sight) but it does extend beyond normal viewing distance if there are no land masses between it and the ship.

Naval battles are interesting. You can have battleships firing at each other from very long distances, subs (submerged and surfaced) firing torpedoes at enemy ships and have PT boat attacks.

Looks great from 1500 meters especially if you have the ships doing evasive patterns..

YEah, and when you put the waypoints down, keep in mind that the default speed is is usually very slow, and in KM, not knots. You need to get carriers up to at least 39 knots if you wanna reliably carry ordinance. I always put an absurd KM speed to insure that it goes the max its capable of. Remember that CVEs are much slower in reality (and I think in the sim) and they could only do about 20knots, while the big CVs could usually do over 30.