Retreating ships to fire at enemies within range.

Yeah, I've noticed this as well. It is great when it is your opponent who is retreating though

Is this a bug? Or are ships not supposed to attack other ships in range of the route of escape. I don't want ships going out of the way to attack during movement, but maybe weapons range (within arc) only while moving instead of no firing.

Ships will fire if they have anything in their firing arc whether they are moving or not. This is most apparent with capitalships because they have weapons in many banks (often even in the rear so as they retreat you will see them firing back). You don't see this as often with frigates because most of them only have front firing weapons with narrow cones.

In my experience this works if ships are moving, but doesn't work if the ship's current orders are "Attack X." Any weapons that can't fire at X won't fire at all.

This is easy to verify. Fly a Kol into a pack of enemies, say A, B, and C, by giving a move order into the middle of the pack. You'll notice that the Kol will fire at all 3 targets with whatever weapons are able to engage. Now right-click on a target, say B, to order the Kol to attack that target.

The Kol will immediately stop firing at targets A and C. All weapons that can fire at B will do so, but any weapon that can't fire at B will not fire at all, even if they could fire at targets A or C.

If you then right-click some empty point in space, thus replacing the "Attack B" order with a "Move to position" order, then immediately all weapons will begin firing at whatever targets lie in their firing arcs.

That, however, makes sense. In essence, what you're doing by clicking on a sole target is telling the wee little captain inside the ship/game AI "Concentrate all available guns in the firing arc to fire on X target and ignore everything else".

If I were looking at this solely as a fleet admiral, I'd have multiple captial ships concentrating fire on specific, high value targets instead of shotgunning everything in their firing arcs. I should have other ships in my fleets to act as escorts and pickets to pick off any smaller harrassers.

Otherwise, what is the point of having a fleet and fleet action?

You are both right. If a given gun can hit the target you assigned, it should fire at it but every weapon that can't, should fire at something else. I have confirmed that the other banks are failing to acquire targets when you give an attack order, however if you let the AI pick targets, the other banks will work. It'll be tight but we may be able to include a fix for this in the upcoming patch. Otherwise it will have to wait. Thx for finding this one and identifying the situation in which it occurs

I've seen this mostly with the bombers - If I've given a move order (to position for defense) and then an enemy arrives, the bomber(s) will continue to their ordered position and then attack, even if they fly right past the only target in the well. They should at least execute an 'en passant' attack. I can live with having to re-issue orders if I want them to concentrate their attack.