So look at this nasty bug I found the other day: I had run out of fuel when I absent mindedly agreed to give 3 of my 4 fuel to a person in need, only noticing afterward that I was so low. So you drift in space waiting for events to happen, which got me scrap, drone parts and other things that weren't fuel. however, once I was overtaken, I was pretty much hosed so I clicked on hangar and started a new game as an engi ship. But low and behold the game still thought the fleet was where i started. Yeah. needed to restart.
Check out the mods people have made for it. Some greatly slow the fleet pursuit. http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=11 Specifically this one: http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2593
Slowing the fleet pursuit kinda negates the whole purpose of the game. It would be like having a race and everyone agreeing to sit down in the middle of the race to have a cup of tea. Wait... I just had a great idea for a new Olympic sport! For fairness sake, though I think we ought to allow the use of coffee to not give the Chinese and British an unfair advantage.
We'll test it out in the commonwealth games. Of course, the Australian's will win by chugging the still-hot tea, while the more civilized peoples need wait until it sips to a pleasant degree... darling.
I think disabling the fleet hurts the game, since you can just explore every beacon and be much, much more powerful than expected, steamrolling anything in your path. If you disable the fleet you'd have to ramp up the difficulty of the following sectors significantly to balance this.
