Damaging and destroying modules

One of things that I feel would be a positive addition to the game would be a system where the hitpoints of a ship, are divided between hull points and the various modules that the ship has.

For instance a ship has 10 basic hull points. The hit points of all it's modules are added onto the ship total hitpoints. Every time a ship takes damage, the damage is randomised between the hull and the modules, depending on the total amount of space taken up by the modules. Assuming that 100% of the ships space is taken up by modules, there is a 25% chance of each point of damage bieng assinged to a module depending on the total
percentage of the space taken up by each module. Excess space is taken by the hull as per damage.

If a module on a ship takes damage, it is less effective, depending on how much damage is taken. Fractions are rounded DOWN, meaning that early ships, with few weapons and primative weaponry doing only 1 damage, can be rendered defenseless with a single lucky hit.

A module with no HP left, is destroyed. Destroyed modules must be replaced, by upgrading the ship back to it's own type. If a hull (the core hitpoints) is reduced to 0 HP, the ship is destroyed, however many modules it may have.

Modules that carry people, lose a fraction of those people, for every hull point lost. So a transport module with 10 HP and carrying 1 billion people, loses 100 million people, for every hull point lost in battle.

Relative speed and manuavarability
The speed of ships on the battlefield does not change, however their speed relative to one another, is decided by their total speed on the main map. A ship with 7 moves, will move 7X as fast as a ship with 1 move, even though the game speed is decided as though all ship were going at the speed of the fastest ship.

Manuavarability is a fixed value, determining how fast the ship can turn on it's axis. This is decided by the size of the ship. A smaller ship is always more manuavarable than a large one. However a large ship may be faster, which can make up for a longer turn time. As all ships should have a certain fire ark, a more manuavarable and faster ship, should be able to evade the fire of a less manuavarable and slower ship by getting into it's no-fire zone and shooting it until it is no more.

Fleeing
When both sides deploy, a hyper-tunnel graphic is always there at the edge of the field, at each side of the battlefield. This is the ships escape route from the battlefield.

Each ship has a courage value. This represents the willingness of the crew to fight on. The courage value is determined by the total hitpoints a ship has left at the beginning of the battle and is modified by the amount of damage taken by ships in battle, particularly itself and particularly by ships destroyed and already running. Fleeing ships, can cause other ships to flee this way, unarmed ships don't count for this.

A ship flees when either it is unarmed or has become unarmed or beacause it's courage value is reduced to nothing or beacause of certain tactics. Fleeing ships flee towards their sides hypertunnel and dissapear into the tunnel and away from the battlefield. A ship that reaches the hypertunnel, cannot be pursued, it is gone for good. The attackers start near there hypertunnel, the defenders hypertunnel is on the other side of the battlefield, while the defenders themselves are in the center.

A ship that faster than it's opponants has a good chance of getting away.

Ships that flee, head automaticly for the nearest planet according to autopilot. In the next go of the player, the autopilot can be cancelled and the ship then given new orders. A ship in orbit that flees, heads for the nearest other planet to the one it flees from. If there is no planet to flee to, the ship flees directly away from the attackers.

A fleeing fleet, can start another battle, if it runs into another ship or fleet.

Tactics

Finally you can select a particular set of tactics for your ships in battle. The default tactics are forward attack, this is the tactic we have at the moment. The ship or fleet recieves orders, of how to behave as either an attacker or defender. The tactics would be as follows.

Attacking tactics
Hit and run- The ships attack unarmed ships, if available. If none are available, this tactic isn't used and the default is used instead. The ships avoid the armed defenders and focus their attacks on unarmed ships, such as transports, when all unarmed ships are destroyed or have escaped, they flee. This is a very costly tactic for anyone who is not a fast manuavarable ship, beacause the unarmed ships are also fleeing and in order to get to them, not only do they need to evade any escorts on the way in, but also on the way in.

Evasion- The ships do not approach the defenders directly, but attempt to outmanuavare them, while shooting bursts of fire at the defenders as they go. This is another tactic for fast manuavarable ships.

Circle- The ships keep to a low speed and shot moving as soon as targets come into range. The ships attempt to mantain as wide a fire arc as possible, at the expense of density of fire.

Wedge- The most heavily armed, protected ship and healty ship deploys at the front while the others move in behind it. They attempt to lay down an extremely heavy battery of fire and still mantain as wide an ark of fire as possible.

Defending tactics-

Static Circle- The Defenders to do move independantly at all, they simply deploy in a cicle, around any unarmed ships and destroy anyone who comes near. If escorting unarmed ships, they will move with them as they flee.

Evasion- The Defenders spread out and attempt to outflank the attackers.

Cicle- The Defenders deploy in a cicle and slowly move towards the attackers.

Rearguard- The defenders flee, while sending ships to fight a rearguard action. This can succeed in either forcing the attacker to let them escape, or seperate the slower ships and the faster ones, allowing both the latter and the former to be destroyed piecemeal.

Hammer- The defenders deploy behind around a dense block of powerful ships, in the centre. If anyone attampts to outflank those ships, the ships behind which are held in reserve, go outwards to meet them.