I'm undecided about agreeing or disagreeing.

If you could though, if you failed that percentage chance to breakaway, you should be destroyed for "turning your back" to the enemy.

Can't agree more! I can live without tactical combat, no big deal, but at least I should be able to tell my fleet to flee. Besides, the system where one side always dies effectively destroyes the whole experience concept.
In my humble opinion adding just few control options to combat - such as targeting priority and retreat command would make this already wonderful game even more great. Please!

such as targeting priority

This is one thing I dont understand as a request. Could you perhaps go into a bit more detail here?

As far as I can see the game does what the human would do in any given situation i.e. Attack the biggest potential threat (highest attack against your ships) with the lowest defense. I find it hard to produce a situation where I would want to do anything else than that therefore the game just removes that level of micromanagement and the need for me to sit and do the calculation every time.

Perhaps I am missing something?

@Spearthrower

By targeting priority I mean to tell your ships what to attack first, this is discussed plenty in other threads. Imagine situation where an enemy fleet, consisting of troop transport and escort ships is heading toward your planet. And you have conciderably smaller force defending it. Isn't it logical to attack this fleet and tell you ships to take out the transport, even if they are killed afterwards? So there should be options to tell your ships to attack first the biggest threat, the most tough ship, the ship with least HP or similar stuff. It's up to designers how it's easier to implement, _if_ they will implement it.

That's the first time I have actually seen a cogent reasoning behind the ability to target ships in battle. The problem with your example currently is that it would make it near impossible to invade without losing transports as they tend to be put on a cargo hull with 1hp. The counter I suppose, would be to put them onto the larger hulls and whack loads of defenses on them.... then you'd be really stuck what to attack given the choice - attack the transport, potentially not kill it and get creamed by its escorts. I dont know and I think theres a lot that would need to be worked out before anything like that could be implemented.... but thanks for actually providing a working example!!! As for the rest you said, I still say that it makes no sense to attack anything but the thing you are most likely to destroy and which hurts you the most (other than special case scenarios like Transports)

There are other options which I sorely miss as well when I watch the combat....

In addition to the ability to retreat, i'd like to see a compass rose system on the combat screen where you can issue general directives by right-clicking, such as :

Target (-> strongest, -> weakest, -> non-combatants, -> specify (allows you to click on one enemy ship))
Disable (-> engines, -> weapons, -> shields, -> point defenses, -> life support, -> sensors)
Board (->capture, -> sabotage)
Retreat (-> full engine, ->full weapons, -> full defense)
Self-Destruct (->kamikaze, ->destroy ship)

Issuing general orders like this would not really be full tactical combat, but would certainly add life to the combat element of this game and make it far more interesting and enjoyable (for me at least).

It does make sense to be able to retreat, but you would have to create an entire tactial combat situation. Like Birth of the Federation for those of you who are star trek fans. At the moment with the current setup it would be wothless because as soon as the battle starts it's already decided, the viewer is just there for you to see what happend. But it is a good idea if there were tactical combat.

Targetting the transports and allow ships to attack it first would make a nonsense of fleets. If you're flying with a transport do you

a) Fly in a protection formation about it

or

Use it as a scout thus allowing it to be hit first.

I don't think B makes any sense, and I'm sure the enemy fleet WANTS to target the transport, but I'm sure the fleet protecting it has other ideas.

IE:
I take into combat a ship with medium fire power and no defenses so that it can be the cannon fodder I need (such as a medium hulled job) while my big ones finish up everything else.

W/R
Suralle

I actually like the system as it is. I would hate for the enemies to be able to retreat everytime they were losing a battle, because they didn't plan well enough to build up a proper defense. (Same goes for me, if I screwed up, I want to lose.)

In "real life" (I know ugly words) armies, fleets, air wings rarely fight to the death.

Once the screens are killed, it makes sense to retreat the larger capital ships, even if you would "win" the battle. If any change like this is made it should be based on speed of the ships involved, and the AI should be taught the importance of impulse/warp/hyper tech.

Space Empires had a system of fleet orders. It could be added to the ship / fleet info screen (where you set Auto-Explore etc).

Fleet Orders define how a battle will be fought, without requiring tactical control of the action, e.g.:

Commitment:
1. Fight to the death (current default)
2. Fight to 75% damage
3. Fight to 50% damage
4. Fight to 25% damage
5. Run at first damage
Focus:
1. Prioritise most offensive (current default)
2. Prioritise most dangerous (i.e. most offensive against this fleet's defences)
3. Prioritise fastest
4. Prioritise non-combatants

Then, the auto-combat resolves using these settings. A user who never accesses that window won't see any difference from the current behaviour, if the defaults are left as the current settings.

And I agree that retreat should be a percentage, based on relative speed (absolute and remaining) and possibly sensors too. It should probably factor in damage as well - less chance of getting out alive when you're already 75% dead. Not sure about the added complexity of setting retreat policy as well, though.