Another problem with retreating from combat

[Spectarofdeath]

What about engine damaging weapons? Or Tractor beams? As far as a fleet goes, if your equipping a entire fleet just to make it past a wp defense, then your going to be way outgunned and if we're talking a fleet, starbases, mines, sats and all that good stuff for a Wp defense force I don't see how your just going to enter the sector and zoom to a retreat without taking some heavy casualties. Plus, if you have this much of a speed advantage, and your talking about playing against a human, they should notice that your bldg your ships with speed and mind and plan accordingly, say several hunter-killer fleets with their own extremly fast ships to catch any breakthrough attempt. If we're talking about the AI....the AI sucks anyway and wouldn't know if you were above it's homeworld bombarding it to oblivion.

Edit: And about the ships being the same speed, I think if my colony ship has the same amount of speed as your frigate then yeah, it should be able to retreat, not just get stuck moving around the edges of the map waiting for the intercept. Thats the price you pay for not researching better engines or for putting that extra DUC on.

[Suicide Junkie]

The problem with weapons is that you have to get in range to use them.

Yes, an invasion force will lose a few ships at a warppoint, but the rest are free to roam and retreat everywhere else in deep space.
Posting a satellite in every hex to prevent retreats and replacing them every time a ship flies past is not fun.

And my point is that, as is, they do not have to be designed to run the defenses. Equal speed ships... in fact identical warships to yours can escape with minor losses.
You can never catch up to them, so if you use max range strategy you kill at most one ship during the chase to infinity phase. Point blank attempts depend on your starting position, but they are firing back at you with just as much firepower as you are at them, so any of your ships in range get shot down, and maybe you can take some with you.
Suckage ensues.

[Tim_Ward]

Fighters.

[Suicide Junkie]

How will that help the defense?
Unless fighters are super powerful and uberfast, and tough enough to take PD fire from a fleet of retreating enemies even while facing any fighters the enemy sends...

All I ask for is a toggle option in settings.txt to prevent retreat. Let them fall back for a while if they have artillery, but eventually they'll have to face the music head on.

[Tim_Ward]

Suicide Junkie said:
How will that help the defense?
Unless fighters are super powerful and uberfast, and tough enough to take PD fire from a fleet of retreating enemies even while facing any fighters the enemy sends...

All I ask for is a toggle option in settings.txt to prevent retreat. Let them fall back for a while if they have artillery, but eventually they'll have to face the music head on.

Fighters are for the benefit of single ships.

If the enemy insists on making a bee-line for a planet, then your ships should be defending the planet. It would make more sense for them to tackle the fleet seperately, not try and attack them both at the planet.

[AAshbery76]

I'm getting annoyed with these A.I colony ships and supply ships outrunning my destroyers all the bloody time to play this retreating game that drags the game down.Maybe this should be looked at in the Balance Mod.

[RCCCL]

Slick, my strategy on warp point defense is to go into the sector veiw and place my bases/sattilites/ships around the warp point, so that wherever the ships decide to flee to they have to go through alot of weeapons fire.

[Suicide Junkie]

Tim:

Well, maybe not the homeworld right away. You have more than one planet per system, and dividing your forces against a concentrated attack is not going to work.

[Tim_Ward]

Two things;

1) I'll work if the defences on each planet are large enough to make up for splitting your fleet. Cargo capacities of planets are much larger in SEV, at least they are in balance mod so that leaves plenety of room for weapons platforms, etc.

2) Not every planet will be in movement range of the enemy fleet, so you might be able to deduce which planets are under threat and defend accordingly. Also, doesn't retreating cost a movement point as it did in SEIII? If you chase them across the map, they can't move and attack planets in your turn. If it doesn't, it should.

[Spectarofdeath]

I guess what it comes right down to is preference then. There should be a no retreat option for the game, and a retreat option. To me I prefer to have the retreat. It adds realism. It's not like through history two opposing forces get in range of each other and a giant steel curtain falls around them and God says "Lets get ready to rummmmmmmmmbbbbbblllleeee!!!" Retreating can even be used as a offensive manuever, if you have all your ships retreating you might lure the enemy into sending his fastest ships at you at maximum rather then escorting the slower ones and defeat in detail ensues. Personally, I play this way, I design the same ship several times. Lets say a Destroyer. I give one all the speed it can handle. This would be my scouting destroyer designed to penetrate enemy space and give me a heads up whats going on in the sector. I give the next one all the weapons it can carry and hold. This is my battle destroyer, designed for combat with the enemy. And last I might make a support destroyer of some kind, say one with mine/sat/fighter launching, or maybe it's a repair ship, or maybe a AA ship. The point is, I don't just design one class of a ship and then wait for it to be obsolete then design another, I design multiple at once. I might not do this for every single ship design, but when it comes to the lighter ships, multiple designs (for me) is the way to go. How you feel about them running wild through your space is how I felt watching my colony ship get trashed by a scout with 1 DUC in SEIV on like turn 3 because it couldn't actually retreat, it had to run the clock down.