Malfador, Bring back retreat option from SEIII

[Emperor's Child]

If you want to have a retreat option, you almost need to be in simultaneous movement mode. Consider this: At the very end of your movement phase you move into a zone with an enemy ship. This enemy ship then has the ability to chase you out of the zone you occupied, and you could possibly retreat further ahead depending on the logic of where you retreated to. This would be tantamount to getting extra moves.

And from the other perspective, consider the possibility of an enemy coming in to your zone during his movement phase, and your ships retreat from them. He could just simply re-attack you several times, and when it was all said and done you could find your fleet significanty further away from where they started. So how much move would your fleet have to use? I guess you (ie: the computer) would have to just keep track of it and consider that as forced movement which would reduce your fleets own movement in your own phase.

[dmm]

Emperor's Child:
You don't need simultaneous movement. Just make the rule: If you don't have movement left, you can't retreat. (Except maybe allow automatic use of emergency propulsion.) This correctly gives a bonus, in the form of an extra combat option, to ships that have some movement reserve.

Possible problem in turn-based: I don't know if the program keeps track of how much movement a ship has left, after that player's turn is over. But that is a programming problem, not a conceptual problem.

[Q]

Personally I have mixed feelings about the retreat possibility: I did not like very much this feature in SE III when I had to chase a defenseless ship. But more important it was a possibility to cheat and see what was the exact strength of the enemy in a sector.
But as always it would be easy to make everybody happy: make it an option in the game setup!

[klausD]

A possible solution would be to allow a retreating ship only to retreat 1 Square per turn, regardless of the normal speed.

[geoschmo]

I too was not a huge fan of the retreat in SEIII, and am happy it's not in SEIV. Consider the following. An attack ship attacks a colony ship. The attack ship has the speed advantage but because the combat starts with the ships on opponsite sides of the screen, the clony ship can retreat before the attacker can catch him. So the attaacker is forced to either allow him to escape, or spend another strategic movement point chasing him into the next sector. BUT, that combat starts with the ships on opposite sides of the combat screen again. Rinse and repeat, until the attacker gives up or the one of the ships runs out of strategic movement points. This has the effect of greatly increasing the speed of the colony ship in relative to the attacker.

Why should a ship be allowed to retreat from battle, and the pursuer is not allowed to follow? The battle should continue until the combat round ends. Now I could be convinced that the comabt screen should be expanded, although I am not sure how much that would add to the turn processing time. This would allow faster ships to evade until the combat ended without getting caught in the corner.

One of the problems with implementing a retreat option with the current simultaneous movement system is the way movement is calculated. Eacn turn is divided into days (30 I think), and then if a ship has 6 movement points, they get to move every five days. If a ship attackes another ship on a "day" when they have strategic movement, the other ship may not have strategic movement availableon that "day" even if they have some left for the "month" (turn).

Geoschmo

[Dravis]

Another option could be a wrap around map. That wouldn't be very realistic, but it might work. One more option could be that it takes more than 1 movement point to retreat (sorry if somebody thought of that before).

Either way I miss the ability to retreat...

[Instar]

"But more important it was a possibility to cheat and see what was the exact strength of the enemy in a sector."
Well, you could consider when that happens as them to be scout units, but it is kind of unfair for the defenders, as they get no chance to get at the ship.