[Silent Sorrow]

Originally posted by Puke:
i.e., can slower ships retreat from faster ones? if a force is of mixed ships, will only the faster ships be able to run? what becomes of ships of the same speed? is a fighting withdrawl being made, or is the fleet being routed? if a fighting withdrawl, do they inflict damage as they flee? do they take any? do they take more if its a route? how is a route determined? where do they flee to? what if they dont have any movement left?

Why do you need to get into any of this? Why not just abstract it as in MOO2? If you choose to retreat you select "options/retreat" and your ships begin to move to the opposite edge or whatever--and sure, they can be taking damage as they flee. Then, on the next turn the two opposing fleets are still in the same space. The originally attacking fleet may choose to continue to flee on the galactic map (and be chased, or not chased, by the defending fleet).

while most, if not all and possibly more, of those questions can be answered, you do see how it could be problematic to program, and was perhaps left out of the initial release do the the extra time designing and testing that it would have caused.

Though I'm no programmer I don't see how what I described would be difficult to program since it would not actually involve any additional programming beyond adding an option to the options menu.