When i'm flying through the galaxy with scouts, they get destroyed by random pirates... Annoyed by this.. I advanced my technology to the pinnacle and created a superfast dreadnaught and battleships, with some colony ships to do all my exploring and colonizing. (Take that filthy pirates!) However.. I've noticed when I've merged my fleet and it is attacked by pirates, usually they will wipe out my colony ships as they die with leftover torpedos (VICTORY! [ascolonyshipblowsup:,(]) and leave their escort entirely intact. This kinda defies the point of an armed escort. Space is dangerous. So I tried using different fleets.. a non combatant fleet and a defensive fleet.. However the pirates attack the non combatant fleet... So that didn't work. Finally I've been having to keep my colony ships between star systems, whilst my escort fleet paves the way. Unfortunately in the same turn as I sent my colony ship over, hostile aliens appeared.



So what I propose is some way of setting paticular ships in fleets so that they do not appear in battles and are free from harm. If the fleet looses they will surrender and dissapear.



(And also, blowing up civilian ships is kind of a jerk thing to do. I don't think anyone Good would do that. Save for some very vengeful hissho who you probably did the same to, some ruthless united empire who wanted to colonize that star system, or some cravens)

Yeah, there really isn't much of an escort system right now. What you're better off doing, in the terms of using escorts, if to have two fleets. The main battle fleet, with the colony fleet following behind them. Once the battle fleet gets to the system you want to colonize, keep them there, and let the colony fleet catch up. If you have trouble from crossing many systems, just move one at a time. Don't let the battle fleet move away until the colony fleet is in the system already.



It's a bit annoying and tedious, I know, but that is all we can really do right now.



As for the comment about destroying civilian ships...Well...They're pirates. I wouldn't call them "Good."

I think there should be an escort function, where if set combat ships that are in fleet with civilian ships should go between the civilian ships and draw their fire. providing a larger defense for the civilian ships but maybe dropping their own offensive capability by a decently high percentage just to make it balanced on how it works.