What about engine damaging weapons? Or Tractor beams? As far as a fleet goes, if your equipping a entire fleet just to make it past a wp defense, then your going to be way outgunned and if we're talking a fleet, starbases, mines, sats and all that good stuff for a Wp defense force I don't see how your just going to enter the sector and zoom to a retreat without taking some heavy casualties. Plus, if you have this much of a speed advantage, and your talking about playing against a human, they should notice that your bldg your ships with speed and mind and plan accordingly, say several hunter-killer fleets with their own extremly fast ships to catch any breakthrough attempt. If we're talking about the AI....the AI sucks anyway and wouldn't know if you were above it's homeworld bombarding it to oblivion.
Edit: And about the ships being the same speed, I think if my colony ship has the same amount of speed as your frigate then yeah, it should be able to retreat, not just get stuck moving around the edges of the map waiting for the intercept. Thats the price you pay for not researching better engines or for putting that extra DUC on.
