I honestly believe that this is best left as a later expansion after the game has been polished and not apart of the vanilla game so that the option is there for those who want it (and I'm 100% sure it would bring in a lot of players who have never played Galactic Civilization before).

Don't get me wrong I love the game and I have played Galactic Civilization longer then almost everyone here as I been playing since it was an OS/2 exclusive and still have my original copy around here to prove it. 

I'm not saying to turn Galactic Civ into a RTS, Just adding an RTS Layer to a TBS game for the battles, kinda like the Campaign in the Total War Franchise where the game is a TBS game with RTS battles (and that's if the player even wants to fight it out, as they don't have to and can auto resolve it) but even more basic as there won't be huge epic battles with thousands of soldiers doing castle sieges or etc, just a few ships fighting it out in open space as an optional expansion after the game is polished, finished and all the planned expansions are out. 

I don't want an RTS game (Why does everyone think that!?!?)...  First and For-most I want a Civilization Game. I love all the Civilization Titles from Civ 1 and Galactic Civ 1 to Civ 5 and Beyond Earth to Galactic Civ 3, each has brought something new to the table and made for a better game in the end. I don't think the Vanilla Game should have the RTS layer to ship combat either, But I do think it will make a great expansion sometime down the road. Like I've said above The game should remain as it is, A 4X Turn Based Strategy game but with the option to be able to duel the AI and/or other players in a Future Expansion, once the game has had an expansion or 2 and been through balancing patches and tweaks. I have been watching the streams and Friday's reached 200 people watching it which they even stated it's the first time they have had that many people watching it, even as of today it only has 1350 views. The Attila: Total War overview has almost 19000 views in a week since it was posted. Honestly I have all of the Total War games and all of the Civilization games by Stardock and Sid Meir and I really think the Civ games are far superior as they offer way more customization and not limited to a small period in time and the ability to choose where and what you want to build at what time but what they are lacking is a better combat system. Civ 5 made big strides in improving theirs by taking away unit stacking for which is something you cannot do in Galactic Civ because of the nature of the game.  I honestly think the Dev's are on the right track with GC3 and I find myself playing it more then ALL my other games on my PC (which BTW is well over 100 titles) and I super excited to see the game come together in the next few months, but I also think (and everyone I've talked to so far about it) that having the OPTION to fight your own battles (Auto Resolve and combat viewer should always remain an option as well) in real time would bring something totally new into a Civ game that has never been done before and would also broaden the amount of people who be willing to purchase the game. Just to be clear I'm not talking about battles that could last hours either something quick like the battle viewer offers just being able to control it, I don't see battles lasting any longer then 5 mins, 10 mins at absolute most and that would be really pushing it, but would also be nice to give players a chance to flee as well.  Also as admiralwilly suggested a pause feature could be implemented.  

Be nice if you read the rest of the posts before just saying No.

I think tactical combat would just get really old really fast. Even on just medium size maps you can have hundreds of battles till victory. So while it would surely be fun to do it a couple of times, it would become a chore to do it all the time. 

So you might say: "Well, just auto resolve the battles if you think it is boring." 
Well if auto resolving does the trick just as well, than what's the point of doing it manually in the first place? There would need to be some kind of advantage in commanding the fleet manually - meaning the auto-resolving player would have to accept the disadvantage, just because he doesn't have the time and patience to do hundreds of battles. That's not good for moral.

No, in GalCiv you are the ruler of an empire - meaning you enjoy giving the orders, not carrying them out.

If you ask me, the only acceptable solution to the wish for tactical combat is to have a separate game where you can import GalCiv-ships and than do tactical combat with GalCiv-rules but not within the context of an actual GalCiv-game.
Call it "GalCiv pilote academy simulator" if you want. 

Yes...this is a fabulous idea. Thank you for mentioning the expansion idea again, its very thought is popular.

'_;

Just want to add for all the skeptics that they should try a game or 2 on a Total war title and see for themselves on how it does work for the guys that do want to battle it out and how the auto resolve and combat viewer will still be available for those who don't and I keep stressing that its better left as an expansion or add-on sometime down the road 

As Ryat said lots of games have done this before and part of what sets GalCiv apart is the lack of the RTS battle component.  Many if not most of the die hard fans of the IP would consider even suggesting adding RTS battles to be tantamount to heresy.  Even if they didn't consider adding RTS battles to be ruining the IP Stardock has repeatedly said they will not add tactical combat, neither turn based or RTS are options, battle viewer only.

I've gone rounds with some of your detractors simply for saying the planned improvements for this game don't fix all of the issues from GalCiv2.  They seem to think that the planned improvements make GalCiv3 nigh perfect.  You're not going to win this one.  Try Sword of the Stars or Stardrive, that one is pausable RTS for the whole game.

I just wanted to extend a thanks to everyone who as taken their time to post their thoughts on the subject I'll add more pros to this later 

I also want to mention for the record I'm not a big fan of full time RTS games