fleeing to good to be true and it annoys me

Withdrawing is very important part of tactics in sose, especially in multi. U can use support frigates/cap abilities to paralyze enemy flet, space inhibitors to slow down charging etc. And yes it can be hard to get enemy fleet when u chase it with slow enforcers...

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.

yea, the vassari also have a ship which freezes the enemy fleet where it stands, that is why my enemies never escape

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.

cool it was vesari i was facing
ill try taking more control of my fleets thanks for the advice guys (thankfully i have not had my fleet frozen just yet lol look forward to the day they try that

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.

Hmm my Cobalt Frigates, Disiples, and Ravastra Skirmishers say differently as they shoot out waaaaay ahead of my fleets all the time to be the first to slam head first into the opposing forces.    I'm pretty sure they do that for anytime an enemy fleet jumps to one of my planets and I tell my fleet to intercept, but when the enemy retreats they stay with my fleet. Leave when I dont want them to and stay when I need them nipping at the heels of the enemy, those silly frigates.   

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.

Sometimes it is a bad idea to engage the capital ships first anyway. In my early games when the AI decided it had an even chance of winning I would go after the capital ships, since I thought that the capital ships were the biggest threat. I now know that it is best to attack frigates and cruisers to weaken the overal damage the enemy fleet can do and to get rid of healing abilities and other pesky, annoying things the smaller ships can do. Also it seems that the AI is more willing to continue the fight if you are only wiping out its' frigates and cruisers, normally the fight lasts until I have wiped out 80% of the enemy fleet and there losses usually include 1 or 2 capitals as they are retreating.

cool thanks for the feedback i will continue trying   

Now I know about that, I target the capital ships and get them to flee

Saves on a lot of losses taking a new planet. Kill enough capital ships to get them running then let them run and take the planet instead.

Only time you end up having a stand up fight is when they have nowhere left to run !

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.

A trick i have learned, is if they start to run, tell your fleet to jump through as soon as you see them turn tail, usually their smaller ships will go through first so you can see what direction you are needing to head. At this point it is a chase game, but i play the advent, so my bombers make very short work of caps as they try to flee. Also TEC has a ship that has the ability to stop ships.

Those "NANO" carriers sure are hard to catch sometimes though
(A giggle for those of you that know the reference)

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.

You can always learn from losing. make a game with two medium/hard AI's and afterwards watch the replay of the game out of the AI's perspective. This will give you some hints. The AI's play anything but perfect but its still a good learning experience for beginners. Later on you can download and watch replays from real players.

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.