The endless 4X games have always struggled with designing combat. Since it needs to be sleek and quick to avoid player fatigue (with all the other stuff going on in the game), combat often doesn't feel that tactically engaging or refined. Endless Spaces' rock-paper-scissors systems are fine, but I've always found the positional aspects of fleet battles to be more interessting. Unfortunately, in endless space 2 the player has to choose between picking the ideal tactical stats bonus and the ideal fleet formation. This means that fleet formations are often ignored, since the stat bonuses are a) much more easy to evaluate, and b) often just better than the positional bonuses. I think combat will have to improve at some point in the endless series, even if it's difficult to design and if overhauling the system might be annoying. Maybe more extensive changes can wait until an expansion or the next endless space game, but I think they are still important to think about.


Easier Suggestions: I think we should separate fleet position tactics and fleet bonuses, so you can choose each separately. For instance, you could choose to keep your artillery ships at range while strengthening your shields. This would remove the tension between choosing better positional tactics vs better stats, and encouraging players to expirement more with the former. You could also add more customizable positional orders for your fleets, so that you can send your skirmishers in for close combat while keeping support and artillery back, for example. We should also separate fighter/bomber tactics from general stat bonuses, so you don't have to choose between general stats and a strategy for your smaller craft. It would also be nice if fleet fights were generally less one sided in favour of superior numbers and technology, but that's really its own topic.


More Adventurous Suggestions: There should be more modules which care about flotilla positioning. For example, there could be a shield module that protects all ships in a flotilla, so you can use your big defensive ships to shield its smaller allies. Another example would be that better engines could allow close range ships to close in on the enemy.


Even More Adventurous Suggestions: You can edit fleet tactics after each phase. For istance you can use your close range ships and fighters defensively against enemy missiles in the first phase, then rush the enemy in the next phase once the theat of missiles is diminished. You could also set up flanking manouvers, drive a wedge through enemy positions, design ships that are better at broadsideor frontal attack, plan around a newly boarded ship in the next phase etc.


Not all of these ideas are practical, but I hope some of them are helpful. I'm a big fan of the game and hope this feedback can make it even better.