Okay, before you close, no I don't think we should put controllable tactical combat in. There're too many reasons to name right here, go look at one of the dozens of other threads.
My concern is the actual movie of your ships fighting. Now, I don't expect it to rival real movies or anything, but watching those ships mill about while shooting at each other seems mildly silly. I mean, though it's not supposed to be tactical combat... There's no TACTICS in the video. I mean, you have fighters that spread out and just go wild. The firing is random. Etc.
Now, I'm not saying it's BAD persay, but I think it could be greatly improved with a few additions. Have fleets act as fleets. Have them adopt formations and fire in simeltaneous or near simeltaneous coordination. Have fighters break up into Wing Pairs and make them considerably faster than the bigger ships. The biggerships may be able to go 21 parsecs in a turn with all those engines, but in realspace, that mass would be hard to move. Make them slow, ponderous bastions of war, like they're supposed to be.
Another thing that might be kewl, is if you actually made the weapons track the targets. I know it might be difficult, graphics wise, to have them trace the target and keep the turrets pointed the right way, but those little touches could make a function battle viewer into a magnificant portal into the depths of carnage that space combat could bring.
For example of the silliness that could be avoided... Armor should not be a translucent bubble around my ships. For shields that makes sense. For ECM and Chaff and stuff, simple particle effects that intercept the missile and have it explode prematurely would be awesome... Or have the missiles spark with electricity as the ECM affects them and the missiles go wide of their mark.
I don't know how feasable this might be, but something as simple as having ships act in formations, rather than milling about randomly... Having them make passes at each other and firing those Mass Drivers at point blank range... Having missile boats form up and fire a withering volley of Harpoons or having a pair of Dreadnoughts raining staggered plasma death down on your enemy's ships.Adding effects and touchs like this would make an already great game superb in my opinion.
