I'm all for more unique battle cards. It would make combat less predictable, but far more interesting.

As it is now, I rarely edit my battle deck, as I typically just make a balanced deck in terms of range and armor type and never worry about it again. Also, the "reward" cards for quests and exploring are all variations of "give resource if all of my ships die." which is boring.

I say take ranges off cards and let the player set the range of each flotilla manually, make the battle cards truely unique, and add more special theater effects to the map. While those looking for direct control of battles would still complain, I thing those changes would dispel most of the other complaints about combat being boring.