Ok, let me quote a smaller part. Regarding your colony ship example:
quote:
Originally posted by geoschmo:
... This has the effect of greatly increasing the speed of the colony ship in relative to the attacker.
I don't think it increases the speed of the colony ship in any way. Say it is speed 5 and the warship is speed 6 (the typical ion engine example). In the first place, if the colony ship used its strategic movement on its turn (the usual situation), then it can't retreat and gets stomped immediately. However, if the colony ship didn't move at all on its turn, then it will be able to retreat five times. If the warship starts adjacent to the colony ship, it will be able to try to engage it six times, and on the sixth time, it will catch and stomp the colony ship. This actually coincides quite accurately with what would be expected for a speed 6 ship to catch a speed 5 ship that is one sector away and wants to flee - in a precise simultaneous movement system, this is exactly what would happen.
PvK