How to avoid being kited?

[ElOhTeeBee]

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?

[chemical_art]

Those flagship are a nightmare. Alwayszipping by. I find i need full engine power to keep up. I fly parallel to them and then land mu hits

[Misery]

This actually seems to be a bit of a balance issue; I've seen this exact complaint pop up in other places such as the Steam forums and whatnot.  Considering some of the mission objective types, this one could be a definite problem.  It seems to mostly happen on the lower difficulties.  I'm playing on Misery and have not run into this one at all. 

I've submitted a report to Mantis for this particular issue, which can be found here: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=14241

Feel free to add in any comments or suggestions you may have on that.

I doubt it'll take too long at all for them to come up with a fix to it, though I dunno if they'll be patching over the weekend specifically.  They're generally very quick about this sort of thing regardless though.

[Pluto011]

If you got em, gravity missiles usually work pretty well against the faster ships for me.

[Jukelo]

I found it best to not go after them at all. Divert engine power to the shields and weapons, let them loop around and hit them when they're headed back towards you in a straight line. With some luck you can even score a hit with the gigacannon. The issue with this is, taking them out tends to take significantly longer and is rather tedious.

[ShiroIchida]

Yeah, those guys are a pain. The trick is to actually disengage and move AWAY from them - they'll turn about and you can catch them in a head-to-head and hopefully nail them on the merge. If you tail chase them they'll just outrun your bullets and make you rage.

[Zinc]

I found it best to not go after them at all. Divert engine power to the shields and weapons, let them loop around and hit them when they're headed back towards you in a straight line. With some luck you can even score a hit with the gigacannon. The issue with this is, taking them out tends to take significantly longer and is rather tedious.

Take this advice, but go one step further and set your sights on any other enemy on sensors. Ravens (or at least that's what the Acutian speed demons are called) tend to be nonthreatening unless you're chasing behind them. Best to save them for last.