Bam! It was Star Control 3 and it was the Spathi. Released in 1996.
Thank you, Reiji! 
You are much welcome, Sage. Glad to know my 'completely useless knowledge of old video games'
isn't so useless after all!
Seriously, though. The Spathi are some of the
biggest cowards in the known gaming universe. In SC2, their ship - the Eluder - is a pretty quick little bugger, with rear-firing homing torpedoes. It's very, very tough to kill
if you fight like a Spathi - running away from whatever's chasing you.
And Star, the bunnies weren't carnivorous, the Spathi are just exceedingly, exceedingly paranoid. How paranoid are they?
Their most feared thing - the ULTIMATE EVIL (yes, said like that) - they once sent out an expedition to wipe it out. When the party came back with no signs of the ULTIMATE EVIL, how did the Spathi High Council respond?
My God! It knows so much about us that it knows what our sensor ranges are and thus how far to stay back from our ships to lurk
just out of distance of them!