While auto-resolve usually works to an acceptable degree, at times (especially when fighting larger fleets then your own), it can sometimes turn what is an easy win into a fairly horrible loss.
For instance, while playing with a small group of frigates after starting a new game, I decided to attack a fleet fielding a buffalo mk 2, two lashers, a hound and a bomber/fighter wing. After destroying all of their ships bar one lasher and a (then retreating) talon wing (the lasher of which was hiding somewhere on the fairly large map) and while still fielding a lasher, two hounds and a talon wing, I decided that it would be faster to just exit the battle and let auto-resolve deal with the rest.
Much to my surprise, when it went to the post battle screen, the auto-resolve had decided that their remaining lasher and crippled talon wing had managed to go rambo on my fleet, as the lasher and talon wing had taken no further damage and managed to destroy my talon wing and one of my lashers, take my hound down to 4% health and force my other lasher to sabotage itself.
This seems to happen somewhat often when fighting fleets that are originally more powerful than your own, as I can recall a few times when auto-resolving while chasing the odd retreating Tempest or wasp wing (after decimating the Tri-Tachyon Attack fleets) a similar situation occurring, where the auto-resolve decided that the remaining frigates/fighters managed to defeat my fairly healthy fleet by themselves.
As such, I'm wondering if the game continues to count retreated ships into the overall fleet strength used in the auto-resolve calculations, or (more possibly) removes ships from your fleet combat strength if you've taken enough crew losses to ordinarily be unable to commit them to combat, even though they are still in the battle and you still consider them combat assets.
While the way auto-resolve calculates fleet strength may make it downright difficult to change (as I suspect it is already a fairly complicated calculation), and while a fairly minor gripe that can be mostly ignored or passed off as a quirk of a few specific situations, I was just wondering if there would be a way to make the ships currently deployed in combat exempt from crew checks (assuming such a thing exists) to make the auto-resolve more reliable for ending what should be easy wins.