I was stealing some tech from the Acutians, and trying to take the opportunity to whittle down their fleets a little since they declared war on some folks that I'd rather they didn't get into fights with. However, the one capital ship there outsped me. Naturally, I diverted a bit of power from shields to engines to try and keep up... but it was still ahead of me, to the point where my shots were expiring before they reached the enemy ship, even when I was directly following them. I couldn't divert more power, because my options were either to further destabilize my shields while directly in the enemy firing path with no alternatives, or to reduce weapon power, meaning that I'd have less range and less damage, making it even harder to actually kill the ship.
The choice I made was to say "hug this", turn the game off, and go to do something fun. For future reference, what is the player expected to do in these situations?