Retreat, combat, and you

Setup the sector. You can put your ships right on top of the colony ship that way.

i have had the same problem with retreaters

i have had to go so far as sorrounding them completely so they retreat UNTO a ship

which i DONT get why that doesnt trigger an attack anyway...

Anyone who wants power; by definition, cannot be trusted with it...

I found that chasing down those pesky colony ships or heavy carriers comes down to angles. I found that when you're chasing the enemy ships on the horizontal or vertical you have a much better chance of catching your prey. If you're chasing on the diagonal you almost never catch them because they get too much of a lead. If I'm chasing on the diagonal I will actually move to an empty hex to change my angle of attack from the diagonal to the horizontal/vertical. Beats having to chase down a colony ship for 11 to 13 hexes.
Omnius

My standard tactic was to have 2 ships take down each colony ship - one stands directly opposite the other which initiates attack onto the middle hex where the enemy is. Auto-move ensures the enemy retreats in a straight line, directly to where my other ship is (which would be equipped with Tractor Beams and Boarding Parties).

But I haven't played much 1.20 - this no longer works?

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Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

I've switched to useing fighters to track down retreaters. In balance mod though, fighters have a lot lower movment ability.

SEV, more than a feeling.

Note though that in the mod, Fighters get 50% more combat movement per movement point than ships.

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I use tactics similar to Psieye for lone enemy ships.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

freightors, and other ships non stop run and i can never catch up. I built drones to help with this but that didn't work either, its annoying. They shouldn't be able to run around the sector so easily.

I use the two ship and force them to retreat into me trick

In a game I played a couple of months ago, one empire had one lousy ship left to prevent my winning the game, no planets. It took me 20 turns of trying with increasingly longer range csm armed warships to conclude that the sucker was always started within the sector at a distance from my ship that guaranteed he could retreat before I could kill him. So I researched fighters and built a few and a carrier. I put a fighter into each hex adjacent to him and then chased him out of the sector. When I started combat with the fighter already deployed in the sector it was just close enough to blow him up before he retreated, and the next turn I got the victory screen.

This was so frustrating to me that I now depend entirely on mines and fighters for defense/offense. A fighter with maximum engines can run down any ship, and if it is a small fighter then it is about the equivalent of a large frigate or small destroyer in effective firepower. By this I mean that the to hit and defense modifiers of a level 3 small fighter are about 80%. They are very hard to hit and almost never miss. With level 11 armor and combat sensors and a level 10+ weapon they rule the galaxy. They cost a lot less to build and maintain than ships. The only downside is that you cannot assault through a warp point with them unless they are taken by a carrier. The carrier gets shot to pieces by the warp point fleet before it can launch much. Against non ordnance armed ships a fleet of carriers can make little progress. But if you can exhaust their ordnance shooting up the first few ships through the warp point, then your carriers can finish off even the biggest fleet. Be sure your fleets include plenty of supply and ordnance ships to restock the carriers once fighters are recovered.

Against the stock AI none of this is necessary if you build lots of intelligence centers. Sabotage ships against any empire that is becoming a threat and his warships will defect to you within a dozen turns or so. Blockading his planets with his own subverted ships will quickly bankrupt him. You can either land troops or blast his planets to genocide him if you have enough ordnance. But I noticed that the stupid AI will let you blockade him with a warship with no supplies or ordnance at all, even when a fleet sits just a few hexes away. This would never work against a human player.

To get back to the topic, fighters are just the ticket for chasing down the lousy remnants of conquered races which prevent you from getting the victory screen.

Not unrelatedly, i had proposed the fighters to hunt down fast missile-ships (PArthain_Shot Ships, i thinkof them)

I had aproblem with an empire that had drones floating around i could never catch- short of sorrounding with ships - which i didn't care enough to do.

i would think retreating into a hex should trigger a combat where both the pursuer AND the waitng ship are on the "map" with the pusuing ship.Anyone who wants power; by definition, cannot be trusted with it...

This is one of the reasons I like the Interrelated Mod as if you are beating them thoroughly enough or just massively over power them people will surrender to you ,you have to get a score well ahead of theirs but it can be done. Not to mention that the AI in IRM is really evil I am struggling at 5th place in a game where the AI was given max difficulty and max bonus. Do the same in stock and I would be first even so at this point 10 years into the game. No need therefore to chase any thing down