[God Emperor]

I must agree with Talenn again regarding retreats. Although the current system is fairly unrealistic with respect to a retreating playing getting trapped in a corner, STRATEGICALLY it doesnt play out too bad. Also as has been pointed out, there are other oddities in the game system so this is not an exception.

I do like the idea though of factoring in ship speeds and relative supply levels. I know it would involve a bit of code but the following might help;

Include a retreat order option. If selected by a player, the code looks at the relative average speed and supply differences of the attackers warships and defenders (retreating player)ships (all ships, not just warships) and modifies the combat round length with 20 turns being the base. The calculated number could be kept hidden to keep a bit of suspense ("damn when is this combat round going to end", says the retreating player).
I would suggest that there be a minimum combat round length and a maximum (most players who want to retreat are usually dead by turn 30, so theres not too much point going beyong this).
The base 20 combat rounds would also help reduce the oddity of a tiny ship with 1 or 2 missiles taking out decent sized planet in one combat round.
Thoughts?