[Kevin Arisa]

One of my biggest gripes is the way satellites are deployed. 4 out of 5 times the sats are on the opposite side of the warp point\planet that the enemy is on. The enemy then is able to stay at least 3 spaces away from the sats by staying on the opposite side of the planet\warp point and the sats cant do anything about it. Perhaps making the sats form a ring or sphere around whatever it is they are orbiting would fix this.

Regarding retreating, I think distance should be the deciding factor. I dont know any scripting language or anything but I have guessed on something like this:
If player distance from enemy > 5 + enemy max weapons range.
That way a ship would have to get out of weapons range before falling off the map. Perhaps making the boundaries move to keep the combatants off the edge unless they are out of range of each other. That would add a bit of an ". . .almost. . .there. . ." effect to retreating.

Regarding custom formations, An interactive window that has all available ships in the fleet in a "tray" on the side and a blank grid in the center. Then a simple drag and drop action would make it easy for even the newest players to get in on fleet formations. Of course, defaults should be kept as an option.

Some sort of scripting would be great. Those that dont want to learn how to use it can just use scripts made by others.