In the times of SEIII I developed a tactic to avoid the WP combats: because the "retreat" was allowed, then, used a few ships as "decoy" with the startegy "optimal Firing range", and the others ships with the "don't get hurt" strategy (usually a sun destroyer, but could be a fleet too).
Then, the decoys gave time to the sun destroyer to retreat to an adjacent sector... and at the same turn blow up the star!
After this, the people started to surround the warp points with ships, and then, don't allow to the enemy ships to retreat (in SEIII a ship could not retreat to a sector where already exist an enemy ship).
[ November 24, 2003, 23:02: Message edited by: Master Belisarius ]