[klausD]

The big problem with charging a movement penalty for defending is that somebody can attack you with 10 separate waves of unarmed escorts, and bleed away all of your attack fleet's movement points. I think you mean if somebody plays simultaneus game, I am right? I never tried this, because I prefer traditional gaming (no surprise )

I like the idea of additional costs of MPs per attack (only in classic turn based) very much. Its better than my "1 battle per turn/stack" thing.

If you want to advance the whole concept a little bit more:

The amount of additional MP cost could be moddable and modified by race advantages and/or technological advances.
If the MP amount for attacking an enemy position exceeds the the rest of the MP allowance of the attacking ship/fleet then the attack should be allowed. (using up the rest of the fleets MP)

Eg fleet A has 6 MP and wants to attack 3 adjacent squares with an enemey fleet in each square. Lets say attacking a normal square with an enemy costs 2 MP. The attacking fleet is 2 squares apart from the first enemy square. It uses up 1 MP for the first empty square then 2 MP for the first attack, then 2 MP for the second attack. Now only 1 MP of the 6 is remaining. The attacking fleet can now attack the 3rd square with the 3rd enemy fleet within using up its remaining MP.

In this matter we can even go further. For example some squares could be more costly to attack than others. (Eg squares which content nebulas, planets, asteroid fields etc. due to more complicated pre-battle plans and astronomical calculations etc.)

And even more, attacks of bigger fleets could be more expensive then attacks of small fleets, due to the fact that coordinating big numbers of attacking ships is more time intensive than coordinating small numbers. This would lead to advantages in splitting up big fleets in smaller more flexible ones (interesting thought)
Again with technology this disadvantage could be modified.

Again this is IMO only reasonable for classic turns not for simultaneous turns (which I dont play and therefore cannot evaluate)

klausD