Don't get hurt - Strategy

Strategies are programmable, to some extent. Under the Empire Options screen (click on the crown in the top menu bar) you will find them at the bottom of the left scrollable list.

Some of the terms in the strategy definitions are a bit ambiguous. Personally, I'd like to know what the differences between some of the ship types are.

For example, what makes a potential target a short range attack ship as opposed to a medium range or long range attack ship, or a ramming ship? Some are obvious, such as fighters or carriers, but others are not. My best guess as to the attack ships is that it's based on the maximum weapons range a ship has, but that doesn't fill in what short, medium, and long range are defined as. Ramming ships are also potentially difficult to define (a ship can be programmed to ram without having a warhead).

I'm no expert at this game, and I haven't dived into it all that deeply yet. I'd probably try setting everything to "do not engage" just to get it to move away from the action, though I don't know what that would lead to when stuff is coming after it (such as fighters or seekers). I'd experiment a little to see if any weapons would still fire at them even while running away. it would be a pity if Do Not Engage turned the weapons off and they didn't fire when the bad guys did manage to close...

The retreat settings could come in handy also, but again, I haven't tested enough to really understand how the various settings interact.

I've been fired on by AI colony ships, so I think they'll still shoot at targets of opportunity. Personally, though, I set my colony ships on a custom variant of the "kamikaze" strategy instead. Because since there's no way to make a colony ship go faster than the opponent, and I rarely upgrade my colony ships to take advantage of new engine technology anyway, it will invariably be slower than the opponent it is trying to run from, rendering it a moot point. So....RAMMING SPEED!