A More Interactive Battle System

I've only been playing ES2 for a little over a month, but one thing I've noticed in my experience, reading reviews, and watching let's plays is the complaints about the current (and previous) battle system. 

While the whole "cinematic battle" thing is cool (really cool imo), it really adds nothing to gameplay. One person on Steam called the battle system "as uninteractive and even less fun than the system from Endless Space 1". 

So I've got a couple rough ideas that I think can make battles more interactive while also making sense for the role you (the player) have in them... as the Emperor of the civilization.

Listed in order of how they'd be seen and used in game, they are;

1) Preset Flotillas and Formations

In the Military Status screen, you'd be able to set a formation for all your fleets to choose by default when a battle started (Turtle, Shield Wall, Team Spirit, etc.), as well as being able to set the formation of an individual fleet if you wanted it to act differently. You'd also be able to set up the flotillas of each fleet individually through this function. 

While we kind of have this right now, it only chooses the last formation we used and that's not always what we want. This is basically just cutting out 1 tiny step to smooth things out.

2) Attackers Initiative & Defenders Favor

This one also ties in heavily to the next point;

- While attacking a fleet in neutral space or space not owned by either player, the attacker would be able to change their starting formation and flotillas whereas the target fleet would be initially stuck with their default formation (as stated in the previous idea) and unable to change their flotillas.

- While attacking a fleet in territory owned by the target, both fleets would be able to change their starting formations and flotilla setup.

- While attacking a fleet in territory owned by the attacker, the attacker can change their starting formation and flotilla setup, whereas the target can only change their formation.

3) Multi-Phase Battles

This is the big one... While the previous points are quite rough, this is the main idea;

Once a battle is declared, it will go through multiple phases (start, middle, and end) just like in ES1. This time however, instead of choosing different "cards" to play rock-paper-scissors at different ranges, you change the formation that your fleet is using to better adapt to or take advantage of your opponents strategy. 

You can set these changes in the initial battle screen, and/or change them as the battle plays out if you choose to watch it.

However, while in battle you would not be able to change what ships are in which flotillas (so you'd need to remember what's where) and changing formations would take a little bit of time in the battle (just a couple seconds, maybe 20-25% of a phase). But this would give us a little more tactical control over battles, rather than just having completely skippable cutscenes and predetermined, stats-based results.