Cautious:
Retreat when:
Slider A) Shields are below x%. Disabled/burnt out shields are not counted in this calculation. (defaults to 0% == no effect)
Slider B) Armour is below x%. Destroyed armour modules are not counted in this calculation. (defaults to 0% == no effect)
Slider C) Hull HP is below x%. (possibly with a toggle to ignore this if no repair supplies / carriers are available.)
A) would allow more interesting approaches to shielding strategies. Instead of tanks at the front, if your ships were fast enough, you could effectively have a rotating frontline. Ignoring any burnt out shield modules prevents the ship permanently retreating once one or more module has been brought down.
B) would enhance the existing behavior a little. Usually when I use cautious, I have the ships retreat at 1% damage, because it takes so long to turn about that otherwise the ship is probably dead before it gets out of range. I’d prefer if they didn’t wait until the armor was down before doing so.
C) this is the existing functionality. It’d be nice to have a toggle so you could choose to have them only repair if they had supplies available (or if carriers with supplies were available, in the case of fighters.)