BangMadsen, on 01 March 2016 - 04:07 PM, said:
I beg to differ on the tactical combat feedback. Granted, you could do a lot more, but I am already trying a few basic strategies to make the most of my fleet in tactical combat.
Attacking a planet that has a few big defensive structures along with several ships to defend it? I tend to go around, and just poke an attack at the nearest ship, to lure them away from the rest, and thereby dividing the defensive forces in two: Ships and building. Easier to take down.
And another few moves that may help, is putting forward one of your shielded units, to let it take the first enemy hits. Make it turn around and flee, to save it from destruction, and let the brunt of your forces move in. Has helped me come out of numerous battles without any casualties.
The UI isn't good at informing you about it, but the classic CTRL-NUMBER combo works to create groups, that you can select later on by the press of a keyboard key.
And for the adrenaline-reluctant players, you may opt to simply reduce the speed whenever you get to the real action. (I count myself among one of them. I love turn based games for the same reason.)
As I said, the tactical combat seems somewhat basic, but it is there, and I don't think it is that bad. Actually, simple can be good. Just a few more options like "Hold your ground"/"Stay in place" command or have your entire selection of ships move at the same pace would be nice additions.
Just my 2 cents... 
1. in MOO2 you could bombard planets and units from afar with missiles, use fighter/bomber carrier fleets or kite the enemies with shorter range weapons around - here it simply doesnt work, because of several factors - too small battlefield, too much clutter getting in the way, larger ships being way WAY too slow (its goddamn space, size doesnt matter if engines/ weight ratio is the same ...) and inability of ships to attack without charging against the enemy.
2. big defensive structures are currently useless- its the alpha thing im sure, but missile bases and especially ground batteries could defend against smaller fleets in MOO2, battlestations required pretty strong offense to take down and were mostly taken out at long range or captured by boarding, here even cruisers can take these out relatively easily (mostly comes down to the fact that ground structures defended by planetary shields were incredibly tough)
3. meanwhile when you are playing around with that "bait" it would be better just to send it little before your main fleet and then attack full force head on - no need to run, that bait ship isnt fast enough to run away from anything anyway. In turnbased style you could instead use proper maneuvering to avoid being shot much- just scrape the engagement envelope of enemy ships and bait them out while moving fleet into flanking positions - kinda doable in RT mode, except small batlefield size makes these maneuvers pointless
4. slowing down isnt the same, unless you are comfortable pausing game every two seconds to issue precise maneuvers to every ship at once ...
simple turn based system in original MOO allowed for far more tactics than RT ever will by simply allowing you to FOCUS on every single ship and what it is doing just as main game allows you to focus on every colony one at a time, not rushing you to do anything on timer ...
5. "simple" is good for basic strategies, "simple" will simply NOT DO for game that claims to be revival of the most iconic space 4X game ever that was COMPLEX in this area. That would be dumbing down the original concept that they claim they want to preserve.