In many cases yes, but not all In our campaign games often the reverse was true; the "fleeing" ship was often a larger vessel that needed to get somewhere to undertake whatever mission it had been assigned, the pursuer often a smaller ship tasked with slowing it down sufficiently to allow other ships to engage. They did make for some interesting games. Where the situation was as you suggest we played out some where there was a criticality to the situation, or if the pursued ship had some reason to make a fight of it, otherwise the umpire usually called the result in the interest of maximising game time.