AI Advancing to the rear |

I have no real experience modding this game, but I have become so frustrated with the AI's retreating that i'm contemplating diving into the data files myself to change this ability.
As it stands the AI non-combat ship designs - eg. freighters, colony ships, empty carriers, will always retreat. The only way to kill them is to completely surround them on the 'strategic view' page and then use multiple ships to corner them and kill them. This requires an intolerable amount of micromanaging.
Does anyone know of a way to remove/disable the ability of ships to retreat? Alternately would I be better off making one of the minor changes I have seen used, such as doubling/trippling fighter speeds so I could use them to destroy these retreating ships?
Thanks

Re: AI Advancing to the rear
mylon beat me to my response.
if you don't want to play in the folders, build fighters.
Can't beat that.

Re: AI Advancing to the rear
For me, the absolute hardest target to kill was a single fighter with 0 supplies. Has the bug "fighters at 0 supplies can still fly just as fast but always retreat" been fixed? Thankfully, 1 fighter is much rarer compared to 1 ship which is easy enough to hunt down (though slightly tedious at times).
Oh and also: I reduce Combat Map Radius to 1000 (down from 2500). Yet to have played a game long enough to test this (I'm gonna get back to BM for a while until IRM is sorted) but in theory this means I don't have to play "Catch the Retreating Freighter" so much. I don't mind the "must surround" situation (you only need to block off half the hexes) but I do mind running forever before they realise they can't retreat.
---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.




Re: AI Advancing to the rear
Look in the settings.txt file. There's a line (recently added in 1.25, actually), that states:
Space Combat Allow Retreat := TRUE
Change this to FALSE and you're good to go. Or you could make fighters faster so they can chase down anything.