[Shadowstar]

Actually it would be interesting if ships would start to slow down after going a certain distance at full speed. Say thier engines start to lose charge and have to slow down to maintain power to the rest of the ship's systems. This would keep combat more or less contained without imposing unrealistic borders in space, and still allow for faster ships to retreat if they need to.

Though in retrospect, what might work better and simpler is to mod the ship sizes and component levels so that there is more variety in ship speeds during combat. It seems like just about every ship of the same vehicle size goes the same speed because everyone just maxes the engines out.

Another thing that would be interesting is if warp points could act like "instant escapes" in combat. Instead of fleeing into infinty, ships could make a bee-line for the warp point, but only if they already had orders to go through the warp point. Would add an interesting "blockade running" aspect to combat.