[Jubala]

Talenn, Yeah I know. It's an abstraction. And I agree WWII would have been very interesting if ships hadn't had inertia and the defender would have had to wait to fire until after the attacker.

For the record I don't really like the inertialess shipmovement in combat all that much but I can live with it.

But I really dislike the "I fire You fire" system we have now since it gives such a tremendous advantage to whoever gets to fire first. I have expressed this dislike in countless threads and suggested other systems I think would be better where both sides fire at the same time to eliminate the firstfire advantage. I won't go into detail here and now, but the bottomline is I'd be very happy if the combat system got an overhaul.

As for retreating ships/fleets causing havoc in your rear, that's what fixed defenses are for. And to avoid that you have stop them at the warppoints and that's what warp point defense is all about. And when conducting a warp point assault the only way to retreat would be back through the warp point. And if you don't want the enemy to run away from you need to have faster ships to run him down with and keep him engaged so he can't retreat and damage/cripple as many as possible for the main battleline to deal with once they catch up. That's what engine destroying weapons are for.

I think it can be done. I also agree it should be an option so those who want it can use it and those don't won't have to. I have seen many good ideas on how to implement it and with a little thinking and later testing I seriously believe it can be done and not be abusable.

Just came up with another idea on how to do it. Split every sector into quadrants (subsectors, whatever) with the center being surrounded by 8 adjacent quadrants. Like this:

XXX
XCX
XXX

Where your ships are at the end of combat is where they are in the sector after combat and their movement is limited by where the enemies ships are. A=Attacker who retreats, D=Defender, C=Center

Sectorquadrants:

XXX
ACD
XXX

Retreaters move choicies in systemsectors: C=Combatsector, B=Blocked, A=Available to move to, I=Chance of intercept depending on enemy orders.

AIB
ACB
AIB

With a kind of zone of control system like this (or related) the retreating player can't just sit out the battle and then move past the defender but has to circle around. That costs movement points which gives the defender a chance to intercept. It can still move back to where it came from which should be back home and if it isn't you're in trouble anyway. I'm not saying that this system alone would do the trick, it's just another idea the needs refining and combined with one or more of the others brought up here it should end up being a working system in the end.