Gyrfalcon wrote:EDIT: Thinking about it a bit more, I think there was the option to Attack Aldib after I retreated from the Defend fight. If the game was auto-resolving that fight, it would explain why ships aren't escaping when they Retreat. If so, I'd vote for Retreat excluding the possibility of further combat and, maybe, force a return to a colony for repairs.
Yeah -- this is indeed what's happened here. I think the first issue with the way this save played out is that you were able to attack Ravin's forces before responding to his dialog choices. That let your scout steal the initiative, when you should have been immediately being chased by a pack of angry slavers
One of the highest priority fixes on my list right now is to ensure that you're forced to finish negotiating with NPCs before starting combat.
The next issue is that the game isn't warning you about fights that will be autoresolved when you hit end-turn. Thus is something we're planning to fix soon-ish, but, we're still mulling over just how that feature will be implemented.
If so, I'd vote for Retreat excluding the possibility of further combat and, maybe, force a return to a colony for repairs.
If you retreat after being
attacked your ship should be safe from those enemies for the rest of the turn. However, if you attack, and then immediately retreat, the fleet you attacked will get another chance to shoot you down before you leave the system. The basic rule governing combat is that each empire can initiate at most 1 attack per star-system per turn. So, when you attacked the Mauraders, you used up your 1 attack in Aldib, but, they had yet to use theirs, and that meant they had an opportunity to chase down and capture your scout.
I think the retreat/attack handling rules are probably about right as is. Your proposal could work as well -- but, a forced trip home is a bit more complex to implement, because it would introduce a bunch of new edge cases. For example, say you attacked an enemy fleet in a system where you had a colony, then retreated, then had the enemy attack (and potentially destroy) your colony in that system. There're lot of ways a scenario like that could lead to confusing / buggy situations. The current rules are simpler -- and I think the big issues we're seeing here can be resolved with a few modest UI improvements.