Chasing Fleets for hours :(

I usually park a fleet in a system where I think they will go to and then lead it there. With the Akkan capital ship, I'll use the ion bolt on his capital ship to take it down.

Really though, the best way to get their attention is to attack it's planets. Once you start lobbing bombs down on a planet, the computer will have to do something and usually does warp in to stop you.

You don't have to kill his ships, but to kill his planets. And planets can't retreat.

But yes, you need 2 hours to wrap up a game where it's clear it's won already. In 1.03 the AI can surrender so let's wait.

good to know, ty guys!

Why chase the fleet when you can just raze their planets It'll hurt them more and force them to come to you when they want to save their planet.

I'd just echo what people are saying, basically; if your goal is to destroy their fleet, you're gonna have to force them to commit to a battle where they are at a disadvantage. Which, in SoaSE, will often mean burning worlds until they get fed up with it.

Interesting addition. I'm sure a "surrender on the spot" option is just what the extra cowardly allways-running-away ai urgently needs in the first AI update

I admit i've just played on normal difficulty so far, but all the ai ever did in those games was build massive fleets... to have them retreat at the first sight of an enemy fleet every single time.

I hopped into a system. He saw me - and fled. So i razed his planet. Jumped into the next system and repeated the process. The only time i got them to fight was in orbit over their very last world. But that fight was quite impressive...

I pushed back a Advent player to his galaxy once, I had not seen his fleet about so i started to attack his planets. Leveled a planet with a relic on then moved my fleet back to my plannet next door. 5 mins later (having not watched the phase lanes (mistake!)) I sent my fleet back.
Found his fleet. All of it. Lost 2 level 9 cap ships while i was running away.  
Attack a relic planet, that will have them running to you.

I usually just fly right by the enemy fleet and go destroy his planets. I only fight his fleet when he has one planet left. let him run then lol .

Well, 1.03 will definitely help, I think, but the ai fleets are pretty cowardly. Just be aware that sometimes when they flee, they flee to your planets and start attacking while you're leveling their planets.

I find it funny and kind of ironic when the AI's cowardice ends up biting me in the rear. I'll jump from a world I've taken into the gravity well of an adjacent system, and run into a sizable but ultimately inferior AI fleet. It will decide to run in the direction I just came from, arrive at my lightly defended world (what use would I have for defenses if my main fleet was there and I was pushing forward) then proceed to bomb it into oblivion as my fleet races back to chase them off.

When I show up they'll invariably run, so I try to bring a good number of my ships, but not all of them, because most of the time they will retreat back to where they came from and into their own territory, and not deeper into mine. Usually they'll run deeper into their own territory and past my fleet, but I've seen a couple of those weird games of Phase Jump Ping-Pong, with the AI's fleet arriving back to it's world, bumping into half of my fleet, then running back to my world, running back into the other half, and so on (I watched this happen with a sizable group of Siege Frigates for a few minutes before my fleets whittled them into nothing).

But anyway, I would recommend trying to trap the AI into a ping-pong type situation, preferably between at least one of your worlds. Phase Jump Inhibitors are pretty bad, but they do slow down jumping, and if you can get an AI to jump around between systems with them with you in chase you'll have a considerable advantage. There are certain capital ships from the various factions that with the right special abilities can also slow down or stop ships long enough for you to kill them before they jump.

Also, large groups of carriers can be effective all loaded with bombers when trying to pin an enemy AI fleet. The bombers can cross a gravity well very fast, deal a large amount of damage in a single pass and can dispatch many lesser ships in a single pass before they can make a jump.

Who needs to chase the fleet around. Just bomb the planets and colonize yourself so he can't recolonize. Once I figured this out it's all you need to do and makes quick work of games.

Sorry man you need to hop online and play against other human opponents. Until they fix the AI and add an insane mode there is little point to playing vs the computer right now. You can just go for his planet like other posters said I guess but why waste your time in a game the other person has no chance of winning? Online is where its at.

Solution to the ping-pong and all of the above threads.

Don’t chase fleets if you don’t have to. Just wrap up killing planets.

If it is approaching near end game and you’ve pretty sure you over-power your opponent, do this:

If a fleet cowardly flees and backtracks, take a look at the fleet when they land in your gravity well. See if they have a “colonizing” battleship. If they don’t, who cares, let them bomb your plant to pieces. You’re about to win anyway.

If they do colonize, it’s annoying as they will colonize the planet after bombing and your left backtracking.

In my experience, mostly the “fleeing” fleet won’t have colonizing battleship. So my advice, let them bomb away. If you are near winning the game, you’ll have way more planets than him, so he won’t bomb yours before you bomb his. Move your fleet from plant to plant and destroy.

This way you can end games earlier without wasting time going back and forth

Why limit the game to Just bombing planet runs, when the game is focused upon fleet to fleet combat?

It really depends. They'll almost always retreat if their capital ships are taking a beating, or if they've lost too many ships to accomplish their goal. Other times I've seen them tenaciously fight to the bitter end for a key objective, such as capturing a critical choke point in my empire.

In other words, you really can't expect the AI to stand and fight if there's nothing to be gained.

Yeah, I know it’s about fleet combat. I’m talking really late game when the big fleet combats have happened and now you have three huge fleets and the AI has small ones going into your planets bombing.

This is the time to just focus on planet bombing “unless like I mentioned” the small AI fleet has a colonizing ship fleeing into your space.

My point is, that when player single player there is definitely a point where it is blatantly obvious you won, but here is still a half hour to an hour of clean-up time. T o limit this time and finally “get to bed”. Just bomb planets as the game is over anyway.

Well... since it's single player, can't you just turn off the computer? I mean, you know you won, so, why play it out?

True enough.