minister settings help please

there is already this option, it doesnt have to be modded: in the designs when you are making a ship you can set the strategy of "dont get hurt" and it will just circle around the edge of combat: set this strategy as for your task force and that particular task force will do.

Also: i dont no much about ministers because i (and most other people) dont use them. Its like this: you know how the AI plays right? well with ministers you are assigning apart of your empire to AI control: and you end up with AI type results

Unarmed ships always run away, as do ships disarmed by combat damage

There are ways round it

1 arm it with one long range weapon and gives it the maximum range strategy
2 turn retreat off there is a setting for this possibly on the game setup page (I don’t know how to do this as I never have, retreating is always a valid tactic as far as I am concerned)
3 design a custom strategy which causes the ship not to retreat but to move away from any enemy ships (I don’t know how to do this but it can be scripted with a minor mod)

Edit setting the ships or task forces strategy to "don’t get hut" will cause it to retreat off the field if it can i.e. it has enough strategic movement and retreat is turned on as it is by default. This is what’s breaking your fleet formation

thats weird: when i selected dont get hurt the ships head for the edge of the retreat line, but then just circle around the edge, with out leaving: are you sure you tried dont get hurt?

Yes use it routinely for non combat ships. The retreating to the edge of the circle and following it round will happen if the ship doesn’t have the movement to retreat or retreat has been turned off. Otherwise it will cross the circle. I arm my fleet support ships and give them the maximum range strategy

I guess its cause i tried it in the simulator

I dont think there is a facility upgrade minister but its easy to do it manualy using the "upgrade all" button on the production screen. this will que up every thing which you can upgrade on all of your colonies. Recomend that you use it frequently as losts of upgrades all at once could bancrupt you.

the refit minister slowly upgrades obselete ship designs to current ones.

It might well be posible to create a minister to do this via a mod as the AI is definatly able to do this.

I thought about editing it and creationg a stand off stratergy as an adition as some ships like lone unarmed colony ships you do want to run away from any combat.