My ships are cowards

I apologize if this has been fixed or talked about before, but my ships keep running away. No matter what commands I give them, they always seem to turn around and start flying away from the oncoming enemy ships. Even my swarms of fighters are flying to the complete opposite end of the map than the enemy ships. I took a screen shot and you can see the bubble around the enemy ships where my fighters won’t go. Suggestions?

This sounds like range settings. Ships will close to engage enemy targets at the range you specify for their orders, and retreat to that range if the enemy gets within half the set range.

So if you say “attack fighters, 1000”, they will close to the enemy at 1000. If the enemy closes that range to 500, they will turn around and ehad off to try and maintain at least 500 range.