Heh that's an interesting point, Longdead. I wouldn't want the movement speed changed though, it seems to me that in a war the AI should be grouping up its ships sooner so that you have to take on entire fleets rather than just sniping all the one offs. That seems like the glaring error to me - all these little ships with 7 move seeing all their friends getting mowed down and the AI just has them continuing on to their distant waypoint, not trying to group them up to mount a defense.
I realise that might add a bunch of time to turn waits but it seems like a price worth paying since if you find yourself completely overpowering an AI it's not super fun to just fly around cleaning up all the orange (coughfuckingkrynncough).
edit: Actually come to think of it, I do like being able to haul ass to get where I am going, but having a battle eat up, say, 25% of your remaining moves wouldn't be a bad thing, as long as you could still initiate with 1 move left. If I had 100 move and at 24 remaining, couldn't start the battle I'd flown all that way to fight, that wouldn't be fun. And the point is that the battle itself, and its aftermath, would take up a chunk of that turn's time that would otherwise have been spent moving.
