Space battles are not fun, no decisions, no random, compared to ES1 the battle view seems lackluster (maybe the camera angles) even the ships explosions are meh...

Overall the battles compared to ES1 are a trollish Stellaris kind of thing and thats very bad.

The weapons have different names (good) but no different effects or animations (a complete disaster).

So you build this nice looking mean ships, fit them with strong powerful looking weapons, gather them in big fleets, send them across the good looking galaxy to do glorious battle and press a button.... to see the results.

I have been playing as many space 4Xs as i can since MoO in the 90s and for the first time I am "not watching"/"auto" battles because there is nothing special to watch and nothing to decide.

I know the ES1 cards where not that popular but they do give some control and a reason to watch the battles.

By all means keep the "auto" button but do give control and a reason to see the ships in action.

To be honest a lot of 4x games have very similar gameplay for fleet battles. 

Stellaris for example is essentially the same. You throw your fleet at something and watch the pretty effects, explosions and the health gauges. 

ES2 at least focuses on the strategy. Your ship designs, flotilla arrangements, battle plans and even the locations in which your having a battle each play a major role in the outcome of a battle. 

imo whe have already a far way better system than Stellaris had today in a single one feature : Strategy position.

We can choose how to attack and at wich range and with 3 position with larger fleet. It's quite simple but lead to a bunch of decision you have to make to ensure victory or try to get minial loss.

That make a great difference on how avoid "this too heavy damaging fleet" on my not well prepared fleet because I choose shield defense and they have mass missile.

On Stellaris we don't have that choice and you can see some sort of suicide style from your fleet because they always run like stupid lemmings rushing the ennemy.

Most 4X games don't even have cinematic combat. ES having it is one of the special things about the game. If you bring up the scan view (spacebar) you can see weapon effective ranges, hits and misses, and even armor absorption rates in real time and use that info to adjust your fleet composition. (Will probably be more important later since currently there is no reason to fit anything other than slugs and lasers)

It's weird that I find myself saying this but I don't mind the ES2 battle system that much. I just think it could use a few more interesting variables like the ability to separate the flotilla movement from the card play effect. Sometimes I see two cards which I want to take the movement from one and combine with the effect of the other but don't have the ability to do so or to manually create each flotilla.

The rest of my complaints about it are mainly getting the cinematic to focus properly  where the action is...but that's probably a more difficult task than it seems from the player end.

Only thing i don't like with ES2 space combat is; they tie combat bonus with flotilla movement. I wish they separate it so you first choose how your flotilla move then pick a bonus to use in battle. I don't see why my long range fleet has a need to raise their shield by 75% and reduce damage output by 10% when using long range tactic against ballistic focus fleet. It is bonker.