Here are some potential “brainstorm” ideas to deal with the issue of the computer constantly retreating and returning to the same planet with many fleets:



1. New battle cards:

a. Pursue. The complete Long Range phase is completed plus one round in Medium Range (with both sides firing) before the enemy can retreat.

b. Aggressive Pursuit. Cancels any retreat but your ships suffer a 50% penalty to defense and evasion.



2. Retreat is not possible if you have more ships total in your other fleets in the system than you do in your retreating fleet.



3. If you retreat with any fleet, your blockade (from all your fleets) is automatically dropped next turn.



Other ideas?



My current solution is to always play a race with the Sheredyn affinity. However, someday I might actually want to play another race affinity!

Id like the retreat cards to be unusable in the long range phase.



Giving a retreating player one shooting phase, and one retreat phase.



Overall allowing the defending player to build medium range ships to fend of pesky scouts as well as using long range snipers to try and pop of the blighter's.

I think those cards are excellent suggestions. I think there should be a caveat that they are ineffective on unarmed ships. That way, building scouts and colony ships without weapons (which I already do) would be encouraged.

Yeah this are pretty decent and good suggestions the retreat spam is annoying me too.



and i dont like the sheredyn technologys at all to play with them.

I have a couple brainstormy ideas:

- A fleet whose opponent has retreated should be able to attack again, if they haven't moved.

- You can't blockade a system unless your fleet has been there since the beginning of the turn. Or, you can only blockade a system if your fleet has full movement points. (I think that amounts to the same thing.)

- Fleets that are "blockading" are always the first target of an attack, instead of the most powerful fleet

- A retreating fleet moves at 1/2 speed. (I don't know if this really makes sense from a thematic point of view)



I do also like the idea of a battle card that counters the retreat card by allowing a full Long Range phase. Though I still don't know that you'd be able to kill off the fleets fast enough to really solve the problem.

I like those pursue cards and the blockade ideas, too.

It's gotten to the point where I only play Sheredyn. Which is getting old.

You don't have to resort to playing the Sheredyn or even change the battle card system.



Fleets with a lot of long range kinetics or long range lasers if the AI has a lot of kinetic defense can take out, or at least severely damage, those AI fleets before their retreat card sends them out of the system. Don't even bother putting anything on these fleets except weapons and you should be able to overload their defenses. If they're using the offensive retreat card it can be blocked by the card that boosts kinetic damage and the card the boosts beam damage.



Also, get the tech with Warp Drive done asap so you can send fleets to the system they are retreating to without having to uses the cosmic strings/wormholes, thereby bypassing the system where the blockade pile-up is happening.



Using just all LRK GCD fleets with any race even if they have a lot of kinetic defenses is usually all I need even on Endless difficulty. The few times that they have enough kinetic defense to survive I have a few LRB fleets to deal with them. BTW, I usually play a custom race with Wasted Space 2 so 30% less tonnage or 3 fewer tier 1 & 2 LRK's on my GCDs.



Also, if spread fire isn't working try nosebreaker or guillotine to concentrate your fire.