Something has been bothering me a bit in the last few twitch dev' streams. The combat looks great and we finally have a complex system to play with (although, can we please have range-dependent bonuses/penalties, like accuracy or damage that degrades with distance, or the opposite ?). However, it looks like a bit too much is decided by the game in the player's stead. Which seems like a shame, as it closes door.

Typically, this looks to be the case for ship roles. I don't think it would cost much to let us assign roles to either ship classes, or even individual ships in a fleet. Sure, there can be an auto-assignment when creating the design in the shipyard, but having it forced on us afterwards closes many doors. Maybe I don't want my long-range glass canon to be an escort, maybe I want it to be a sniper. Let me choose the ships's AI's behavior, I might have great ideas that an auto-assigned role will not allow me to implement.

Finally, a 'tiny' system of "fleet tactics", not in the sense of "tactical combat" but something more akin to a light version of Endless Space's system, could be a great idea. It wouldn't require actual micromanagement if done well, but would still give us a mean to react adaptively to the situation, tailor the orders to the enemy fleet just before the battle...

In other words : there's a complex and rich system, give us a bit more room to interact with it!