I agree with Romeo: We're not against tactical battles, but Amplitude has very openly said that they don't want ES2 to be a game about the Battles. It's supposed to focus on the empire management. And I agree with that. If I want tactical space battles, there are other options. 

Like many of you I absolutely hated card system and lack of any kind of well thought fleet management in battles in ES1. I really disagree with that quote above. Amplitude is trying to do their best with the team they

 have - I understand that - but for me they will kill Endless Space 2 with this battlesystem  - again. You have to have direct control of units/squads ( or whatever will be in game ) in order to feel that you have any kind of 

control of your units. Of course it doesn't have to be RTS system like some of you would like, but turn based tactical battle that has common sense. Big part of every 4x game except building units and buildings are diplomacy and/or battles. In both 4x games from Amplitude those elements are the WORST in those games, and the Devs for whatever reason stick to their vision no matter what.

The Devs are avoiding direct control of units for awkward reasons. This was also the case for Endless Legend. Partially unit control with fingers crossed and pray, to have your battle commands runs like you want is strange. 

There is no logical pointers for thatkind of decisions for me. I have ES1 and EL and sadly I won't buy ES2 if this kind of battle management will be present in game. I'm not playing those games any more becouse of that. 

I wish the Devs the best of luck and open mind for new ideas :)  

Rambling ahead. 

Brief opinions for reference:

Moo II- fun casually but a mess if you're even remotely serious, let alone competitive.  Mostly fun because of the variety of effects and ways to interact (weapon variety, subsystems, shields, boarding etc all allowed for multiple fun casual strategies).  Major issues into the middle/late game (becomes basically a chore to play tactics, first player advantage, takes forever, etc)

ES- Really don't like it.  Cards are bad, ship design felt bad, weapons felt bad.  Auto resolve might have felt better half the time in that the system mattered just enough that I couldn't ignore it, but not enough to be anything more than a chore.  Ship design wasn't fun, but if you did it wrong you could lose when you shouldn't.   Combat was almost never anything more than extending your econ in a way to disrupt other players, and then bigger econ won.

EL- Decent, with potential to be much better if balanced or fleshed out.  Shades of greatness to the point that I would play a solo tactics game using a slightly beffed up version of their system.

Gal Civ-  Given that combat wasn't even necessary it was sort of okay, but gal civ III is basically my least favorite 4x because it feels 100% like and econ min maxing spreadsheet game with very little in the way of any meanginful interaction.  II did an ok job at not being that, and the combat was one way you could interact with the oppositing, and it's minimalistic implimentation wasn't fun, but also wasn't the point of the game, so it was ok.  Can't deny it wasn't a bummer though (and made combat focus games boring).

New MOO- Obvious they bit off more than they could handle (whole game really).  Nice polish, some casual fun, horrifically unbalanced in some of the worst ways, and ultimately too shallow (dps race with very little else mattering).

Tactical battle (either TBS or RTS):

Both of these are very difficult to do right.  The TBS system of EL had major issues with the initiative system and the board (not to mention numbers issues), while things like classic MOOII were inherently broken (go first, win) and extremely obnoxious in the late game (Battles took forever for predictable outcomes).  The RTS system of new moo is not only something that's incredibly hard to build right (and thus going to really be a tech demo on launch rather than a real system) and balance (whole slew of issues), but is also extremely difficult to handle in multiplayer games.  Even worse in games that aren't 1v1, and that's not even talking technical issues (yay lag!).  Complete/direct control adds tremendous layers of complexity in both design and playing for very little gain in most cases.

Really the biggest issue facing 4x combat is how do you make it meaningful realizing it's more than likely it won't matter in many cases.  If I win the econ game early on, I probably out tech or outproduce you, so it doesn't matter what my tactics are because I've got a 2 to 1 superiority in numbers or tech.  I can roll my face on the keyboard and win, and that's a very likely and common outcome for TBS games.   Further how much of your being better at tactics should outweigh me being better at strategy?  I spent all game building a massive empire but suck at the combat system, so should I lose, even if it's 2 to 1?  Maybe.  How about 3 to 1?  How about 4?  How much should it matter now if the players are of equal skill, and how often?

Even worse is that it's hard to design a system that's deep enough to even allow that sort of outcome.  Losing 2 to 1 on purpose in ES would be hard, and once you knew barrier, nano, nano (for a majority of the games life) was next to impossible.  There just wasn't enough depth in the system that two reasonably decent players wouldn't just have the fight determined by fleet composition (size + equipment).  EL did a better job at this in that there could at least be some strategy, and there was a benefit to learning the system, and you couldn't just auto execute the strategy like barrier, nano, nano.  You (sometimes) had to actually think about what you're fighting and adjust for it, thus making encounters unique.

Point being what we know of the current system so far seems promising?  If i somehow trick you into an engagement in an environment that favors me with ship designs that are say, broadside heavy, and manage to hit you in a weak spot or disable important systems, its possible I could, if not win, at least do significant or important damage with a smaller fleet, and not always do the same thing.

Even if it wasn't viable doing fun strats like disabling shield and raiding/boarding parties, or aiming for subsystems, or using tractor beams to hit with terrible weaponry were all really fun to try in MOO II, and I see shades of that here.  How good it actually is will depend on execution, but it seems like it's a system that offers enough depth to matter without being overly intensive or formulaic (again execution and dedication to balance will be key here).

I think ultimately what i'm hoping for out of the system is the ability to play a battle race like MOO II bulrathi, who basically got 0 economic empire bonsues (unlike the cravers who are really just an economic machine on a time limit), who may constantly be behind in the numbers game, but still a major military threat due to their ship combat abilities + a good understanding of the strategic elemenets.  I do think that what they've built so far could achieve that, and really hope they do.  It needs to take advantage of its system though, and not only offer depth in the early and mid game when engagements are generally more even, but in the late game too where they're either lopsided or massive.  Since I don't have to controll all say, 100, ships I should still feel that handling a massive fleet vs a massive fleet is totally different than 2 frigates vs 2 frigates in the early game, and still have depth to it.