Also which enemy was it, because I believe that the Vasari have a support cap ship (I believe the fourth one) has the ability to give a speed boost to nearby ships thus enabling them to get away faster.

The "problem" is that your ships only start following enemies ships when they leave fire range, at which point the enemy ships are often already at full speed and your ships only start accelerating. Just order your ships closer to the enemy and to follow as soon as you see the enemy fleeing. Don't just order them to attack, but to go where the enemy goes.

Remember to disband any possible fleets when chasing. Ships in a fleet all move at the slowest ship's speed.

And don't forget Phase Jump Inhibitors to halt fleeing ships.

Wouldn't you run away from a fight you know you can't possibly win?

In other words, fight the AI on even terms or fight it in some intelligent way. This isn't your typical RTS where an army can be rebuilt in 10 minutes and the AI knows it. The old "group select everything with a gun and swarm" has pretty much the same effect on AIs as it does on players: Run Like Hell.

A'course... it would be a little more interesting if the AI was smart enough to take advantage of your flawed strategy and attack on another front while you had massed everything in one place, like a person would do... but I guess you can't have everything.

What it comes down to is, RTS AIs have traditionally been dumb "fight to the last man" scripts with little more than weighted values and limits for different units. SoaSE's AI isn't so dumb... so look on that as a bug or a feature.

If interdictors and such aren't an option, try just only using half your fleet. Give the enemy some hope of winning the battle. Most importantly don't attack capital ships exclusively - they can be replaced faster than their equivalent sheilds/HP in smaller ships, and smaller ships take longer to build. They also don't have as much of a "psychological impact" on the AI... the computer hates losing its flagships and will often retreat if you destroy them all, regardless of what else it's got to work with.

cool thanks for the feedback i will continue trying   

I like using abilities from my caps that disable thier caps jumps/moves etc. I manually do this when they try to jump away so that I get the kill. I know caps arent the most important part of a fleet since they can be FF'd down so easily. But the computer doesn't know this. Wipe out caps and they wont attack you with anything except planetary bombardments till they have a new cap. Another fun tactic is to crush a cap, then hop to their home world and destroy the factorys, and the military tech buildings then leave and go wipe out their outter worlds. Sure I could stay and take the home planet but I find this tactic leaves me in a better posistion to advance on other worlds.

Hello all! Just got the game a few of days ago and pretty much spent my whole 'weekend' playing! I love it, but I have to be honest, the running away is pretty frustrating, especially when I have tried to engage a fleet that outnumbered me, yet they still run! I have found myself yelling at the AI a couple of times - which makes living alone even more of a blessing.

Does the AI skill level (easy/med/hard) affect that at all? Like, a hard AI will stay and fight where as a med AI will run for the hills? I have been playing with an Easy AI, since getting wiped out in 15 minutes doesn't seem like a good way to learn the game.

Well I mean learn the game mechanics, what each race does, etc... I'll crank it up to medium once I learn all the buttons.