First and foremost, I believe there should be more options to request from a race that you are Allied with. Say you have a system that is being blockaded or invaded, and you need assistance dealing with the attackers. You should be able to request that your ally send reinforcements to that system. Also you could request that your ally attack a specific system of a faction that you are at war with. This would give you a better coordinated effort at logically fighting an enemy, rather than a "ok, lets pile on" method of hitting anywhere and everywhere.



Second, I noticed that there doesn't seem to be any way to choose a specific fleet that you want to use to defend yourself in a system, or to choose which enemy fleet in a system you want to attack. I had 2 fleets attacking a system; one with its primary strengths in combat and another with its primary strengths in invading. An enemy fleet was able to completely ignore my combat fleet and only engaged the invasion fleet, and since once an engagement is declared you cannot attack in that system, I had to lose half of my invasion fleet before I could retaliate with my combat fleet.



Also, fleets on defense around a heavily fortified planet should receive SOME kind of bonus for this. The BEST (read as: most fun) option would be to involve the planet in the combat. Have your improvements fire on the enemy fleet during the arrival phase (since after the fleets close on each other, friendly fire would be a factor), or ad a Planetary Range phase. You could take this a step further and have a battle card that allows you to fire planetary weapons in the combat phases at a % chance to damage friendly forces (increasing as the fleets close in). This would allow a heavily fortified planet compensate for low or no fleet strength. This could help offset a player that is at a technological disadvantage so great that his fleets would never score a kill. Planets without a fleet on defense would not engage in a direct battle, but there could be per-turn damage dealt to an orbiting fleet. This would mean a weak invasion fleet could only effectively blockade a system (outside of weapons range) and could not attempt an invasion without losses.



The other side of this coin would be that, as an invasion progresses, planetary defenses would be destroyed. This could either be a reduced strength per-turn, or the improvements could actually be destroyed. This way, a failed invasion would actually have some benefit towards your next attack, instead of meaning nothing but lost ships.



If involving the planet in direct combat cannot be implemented, conferring a bonus to the orbiting fleet would be possible. A bonus to attack strength could represent the firepower of the planet attacking each round (though this should be a flat amount, so that the planetary strength is factored in even if a weak fleet is in orbit). Possibly a bonus to repair each phase.



I am really enjoying this game, but there is so much potential for things in the diplomacy, battle cards, and combat in general. Can't wait for new mods and updates!



P.S. Looting resources/technology after space combat, and technology from captured planets, would be awesome. This would allow people to progress their tech in other areas if they focused on weapons development instead of diplomacy.