This list is displayed if there is more than one object present at the current location in the System panel. Each object is displayed with its picture and its name. For ships, under their name is displayed the class (design) of the ship. For planets or ships that you own, status icons will be displayed at the right of the list to give you an idea of what their capabilities are.

You may left-click (or right-click) on any item in the list to change the list view to that of an individual report about that item. To return to the list view, you can either press the up arrow in the top right of the individual report window, or click again on the System panel for this location. Once the individual report view is shown, then the order buttons in the Commands panel will light up so that you can give orders to your ships.

If you want to give orders to multiple ships at a time, there are two ways. The best way is to add all of the ships into a fleet, and then give the fleet orders. Another way is that you can hold the Shift key when left-clicking on ships in the Ship List. As you do, each item that is clicked will have a green arrow displayed on them. You can then give orders to this group of ships. Once the orders are complete, the ships are no longer in a group.