quote:
Originally posted by geoschmo:
I too was not a huge fan of the retreat in SEIII, and am happy it's not in SEIV. Consider the following. An attack ship attacks a colony ship. The attack ship has the speed advantage but because the combat starts with the ships on opponsite sides of the screen, the clony ship can retreat before the attacker can catch him. So the attaacker is forced to either allow him to escape, or spend another strategic movement point chasing him into the next sector. BUT, that combat starts with the ships on opposite sides of the combat screen again. Rinse and repeat, until the attacker gives up or the one of the ships runs out of strategic movement points. This has the effect of greatly increasing the speed of the colony ship in relative to the attacker. ...
That's not how the SE III system works. Ships can only retreat if they have unspent movement points from their previous turn. The enemy colony ship can only run if it didn't use all it's movement Last turn. The enemy ship can never move farther than its speed on the strategic map, and only ships that don't use all of their movement have any chance to retreat. If a scout of the same speed moves into your sector and retreats, it will have used two movement points, so you will be able to chase it down unless it has a speed advantage of at least two greater than yours. Also, with the SE III ability to specify a change in strategy based on enemy strength, if you have a battlefleet that you don't want scouted by trivial enemy ships, you can place a screen of light ships in between that fleet and the enemy, with orders to chase up to a strength ratio, or retreat if a real threat appears.
PvK