Was just happily tearing the enemy to peices when i noticed i only had 2 enemy ships left to kill both of which were clearly on cautious orders unfortunately i couldnt catch them with the ships i had and had to wait while they trundled thier butts to their side of the screen to be awarded victory is there a possible glitch with the victory routine or are ships that are running away still considered viable combat forces? my two cents is if the enemy is running away they really cant be considered combat forces and if you end up with only ships on cautious orders left on the screen award the victory the enemy have all been destroyed or routed start the party!
Ah but they are still potential enemy forces, because if they have repair systems, they may turn around and return to the battle. The cautious order is cunning use of strategy by the enemy who is going to regroup and attack later (maybe). You can’t punish them for that 
I see your point assuming the enemy are cruisers but in this particular case it was a pair of frigates that had been mauled rather badly by my fighters and i have yet to see a repair system for a frigate unless i have missed a beta update.
Crank the speed to 4 or deploy a faster fleet or have a sandwich or all of the above. It’s a conscious choice to deploy a cold-molasses speed fleet and not strictly necessary to beat anything but the more obtuse of the player-player challenges.
believe it or not teatimegromit i had actually done all 3 things however the enemy clearly hadn`t heard about our plans the fast fleet element had been wiped out as unfortunately fast in this game really does mean fragile as well,the 2nd half of the sandwich was well and truely annihilated and the game was cranked to 4 it still took them the better part of 5 minutes watching them crawl slowly back to their screen side curse those large maps.
It’s a rare occasion when I build a cruiser that can’t cross even a large map in about 3-4 minutes at 1x speed. All the main missions can be beaten entirely by ships with reasonable engines. I have on occasion wished I could deploy fast frigates with a “wait for 5 minutes, then enter the fray” order. Fast frigates do tend to become mulch disturbingly early in battle, preventing them from being used as the light cavalry that they so clearly are.
Also, you eat fast! It takes me at least 10 minutes to prepare and eat a sandwich.
Put them in formation being lead by a very slow, weak ship some distance ahead of them. When the slow, weak, ship gets taken out, the frigates will launch into action. I’ve used this method to force large formations of fast ships to ‘hold the line’ until they enter the opponent’s range… Then they chaaaaarge.
EDIT: Problem with this method though, is you aren’t allowed to have the ‘keep moving’ order with the ‘formation’ order. It’d be nice if you could assign both (with the ‘keep moving’ order being overridden by the ‘formation’ order until the formation is broken.)
Well how about we get some “wait” orders?
I’m having problems with the current victory conditions also. once, i had two cruisers, the enemy had four or five (i think four) cruisers, and i also had about three or four bomber squadrons (i think four). The enemy cruisers had entirely heavy plasma turrets, no defense against fighters whatsoever. eventually, they massacred my two cruisers, they had three left, one badly damaged. I got a defeat message, but then i kept watching and, eventually, my bombers (though it might have taken a while) beat the crap outta the enemy cruisers, but it still counted as a loss. Maybe the computer should calculate what happens before the battle starts, to prevent that from happening?
Well, the manual does say that if you are below 10% of the “hit points” you brought you lose. So bring a cruiser that is nothing but armor and shields. 
or just bring no cruisers at all. it’s just like, “Damn. All of our cruisers are gone. ALL BOMBERS THAT CAN BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF THE ENEMY CRUISERS! RETREAT!” That’s basically what my captains were saying.
You just gave away my secret for getting lots of honor. Why bring cruisers at all if they just die and lower the honor available and ruin the morale of the bomber pilots?
ah, well, how should i know the first time? all you know at the start is which hulls the enemy is going to have. that’s it. i’m not asking for more info, i’m just stating a reason for my defeat. 