Malfador, Bring back retreat option from SEIII

[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