Infinite combat map

[Suicide Junkie]

With an infinite combat map and no exploits being abused, then any ship with fully functional engines deciding to run away results in you being simply screwed.

The map expands to absurd sizes, and you get things such as 100 megs of combat replay with no shots being fired.

Raapys:
That sounds pretty good. Multiselect on the sector view would also remove the hassle. (Grab the whole fleet, move them as one back to the warppoint, then fiddle the individual positions without need of scrolling)

[Raapys]

I think ships crossing a certain border should be transferred to the next hex automatically, not by choice. But that brings up the problem with ships retreating and being moved in the system view map without actually having any movement points left.

[Q]

Good news but only if the retreat is compulsory.
If the ship to retreat has no strategic movement points left you might allow the retreat anyway but give it some form of punishment like the destruction of one engine (It was running for its life so an engine was overcharged).

[Sivran]

And just don't even think about level 20+ repulsor beams

[Suicide Junkie]

Now you really can knock that attack fleet into next week.

[raynor]

If you are going to allow the combat map to infinitely expand, then it is necessary to modify all the combat code to incorporate the following:

First, defer combat until forces from all surrounding hexes have committed to the battle.

Second, forces entering from different hexes should be placed according to the hexes they entered from.

So, you either use a limited combat map. Or, you alter the combat code to allow 'englobing' attacks. Pick whichever is easiest to implement. :-)

[Shadowstar]

Firstly, not only would that be way too complicated, but it would be impossible in simultaneous multiplayer games since players can't make decisions during other players' turns.

Frankly, I think my solution is the best one. Defending ships simply return to where they were if the enemy goes too far, and everyone's happy. There's no exploit since the attacker has to come back in order to start another combat, and every time they attack it would cost them movement points (and supplies). You wouldn't have immense combat maps either since this would all naturally keep the combat within a reasonable area. You could even throw in a rule that any ship can't attack again in the same turn if they retreated once during that turn already if you really want to cut down on combat log size.