How do I stop my ships from returning home for repair?

[Togego]

I had my first major battle and while I won I was quite annoyed with my ships.
Several ships fled battle and returned to my nearest starbase to repair just because of a minor scratch (1 component damaged, which was an armor). So how do I stop this from happening? Ok, I can completely switch of retreat, but that is not what I want. But a ship with 49 more armor and more than 1000 shield points left should kick some ass instead of cowering in fear.

The second problem I currently have, how do I attack ships outside of a system? I see them on the fleets long range sensor but if I send the fleet to attack the ship, it moves to the location the ship was at thhe moment of the attack and doesn#t follow to the current location. The pirates always attackk my freighters in deep space so there must be a way.

thanks in advance,
Togego

[Aeson]

Several ships fled battle and returned to my nearest starbase to repair just because of a minor scratch (1 component damaged, which was an armor). So how do I stop this from happening? Ok, I can completely switch of retreat, but that is not what I want. But a ship with 49 more armor and more than 1000 shield points left should kick some ass instead of cowering in fear.

Messing with the "flee when" setting is your only direct option here; adding damage control or, preferably, repair components can help.

The second problem I currently have, how do I attack ships outside of a system? I see them on the fleets long range sensor but if I send the fleet to attack the ship, it moves to the location the ship was at thhe moment of the attack and doesn#t follow to the current location. The pirates always attackk my freighters in deep space so there must be a way.

There is no easy way to attack ships in deep space. Most likely, when you see freighters getting attacked in deep space, what you're seeing are freighters which came under attack in a system, fled into deep space, and were pursued and caught not long after ending their short getaway jumps, or maybe freighters which fled into deep space when an attack occurred and have been sitting idle ever since, and have recently been spotted by a pirate ship that could take some time out of its very busy life to remind you of the freighter's existence. Ships that don't get assigned new orders may sit out in deep space for a while and be caught there, but pirate ships are rarely idle for any significant length of time.

Some people have reported being able to pull ships out of hyperspeed with jump denial components, though I personally have never been able to reproduce such an event. There's also a slim possibility that you can manage to hit ships with weapons fire as they fly past at hyperspeed, which might cause the ships to stop and engage, but actually getting a hit in that manner requires very good timing and positioning as well as a bit of luck with regards to what the computer decides to do with the ships you've attacked. If you want to try either of these, though, you really need to order the fleet to jump to a point that the target will pass over and get the ships positioned properly rather than just issuing a generic attack order.

It's much easier to deal with pirate ships by meeting them at their destinations (a freighter with ridiculously heavy shielding, a station, a colony, a probable destination if you can get ships there before or soon after the pirates arrive, whatever gives your responding fleet enough time to get there and engage before the pirates move on) or by destroying the supporting infrastructure than by attempting to intercept a ship in deep space, especially if that ship isn't already engaged with something that will survive and stick around more than a few seconds.

[Damiac]

You probably want to change the flee setting in the design to "20% shields or 50% armor". Otherwise 1 damaged component and they run away, like you said. It's shocking to think that the game didn't originally have that option!

It's too bad there aren't just two dropdowns, one for armor, one for shield.... but what can you do.