How do I get into laser range?

[DFDelta (OP)]

Well stupid question. 

Not wanting to play another game where I just lob hundreds of missiles at enemy ships I decided to play "melee" this time, using mainly laser weapons. 
Now, after 60 years, where all I found were abandoned ruins and apparently ownerless minefields, I finally encountered my first hostile ship (apparently precursor). 

Problem is, I can't get into firing range.   I know my laser ships are designed correctly, I've successfully used them to clear out minefields, and I have used lasers and mesons as PD before.   My ships are almost 3 times as fast as the enemy.   They should be able to rush in and shred that thing, but no matter what I try they just won't. 
They follow it around at roughly 10 million kilometers and are reluctant to go any closer. 
I tried follow, move to, playing around with the minimal distance, looked for a "close in" order (didn't find any). 

I'm out of ideas. 

[Hawkeye]

Set Initiative of your TG as high as you can, so your TG has a chance to move last
Set the TG to follow at a very small distance, say, 100.000 km. (You have to type in 100 for this, as there is a x1000 km factor involved)
Use rather short time increments, because if your TG still moves last. your TG will move in to the desired range, and then the enemy TG will move away again.

That´s all I can think of.

[DFDelta (OP)]

Setting the initiative to 252 actually helped, my ships finally closed in and destroyed the enemy.

Don't quite get why tough.
Should not matter if I close in 495000 km (30s increment, 165km/s), and then the other ship moves 180000 km (6000km/s) away, or if it happens in the opposite order.  I should be 315000 km closer in both situations.

[Brian Neumann]

Setting the initiative to 252 actually helped, my ships finally closed in and destroyed the enemy.

Don't quite get why tough.
Should not matter if I close in 495000 km (30s increment, 165km/s), and then the other ship moves 180000 km (6000km/s) away, or if it happens in the opposite order.  I should be 315000 km closer in both situations.

When your ship moves first it will stop at whatever distance you told it to.  If this is not your full movement then you lose the remainder of your movement.  When you go last this will not happen.  Also part of the problem you may be having is the time interval.  If you have it set to 20,000km and they then move 180000km the total range just became 200000km  That is far enough to be out of range of some beam fire control setups.  If this becomes a problem just switch to the 5 second intervals as then they woudn't be able to move as far.  (30,000km max movement)

Brian