I play most of the game zoomed out to a large tactical view. I like seeing my fleets and planets represented by icons. It makes the game easier to see, assess at a glance, and just generally more tidy.
One thing that would be cool though, for a patch, expansion, or even galciv 3, would be the ability to customize those icons. For instance: I design a warship, and on the shipbuilder screen I choose which icon it will be represented by. That way, I could have different classes, or generations of ships represented differently on the map.
Icons would be fairly easy to make.. probably just a .png.
Just saying it'd be cool is all.
-Neb