These are just suggestions on what I feel could improve the game. Obviously, some of these may be outside the possible scope of time for various reasons.

• Move to a more phase based game model. Currently too many things can happen at the same time, which poses issues.
  
  -I would suggest putting movement at the beginning, or end of a turn, and have movement points be restored before the movement phase.
  
  -Combat should probably happen after movement is resolved.
  
  -Combat happens one battle at a time.
• The ability to retreat. Too many times I have lost non-combatant ships for entering a system that had enemies after I had them leave port.
• Sit-Rep summary, so I can revisit events at any point during the game.
• Right click backs out of menus, which feels weird to me.
• Esc does not open the menu to save/load/options/quit, and there is no tool tip saying what the key may be.
• "Manual" combat feels random and pointless, and does not engage me. I would suggest having three layers of combat: auto, cinematic, tactical(Turn based, preferably); with the ability to toggle the option for tactical combat on for multiplayer.
• Implement a custom cursor for the game, for that visual polish. In addition to this, add a busy cursor for when the end turn is being resolved.
• Relic systems with guardians. Monsters, AI defense fleets, whatever. Systems that are an awesome advantage to have, and having to work to get them.
• Heroes for hire leave after a period of time.
• Optional random ship name generation based on size/class, and the ability to rename ship types to possibly avoid "Name" "Name 2" "Name 3" if the player prefers.
  
  

Some already suggested and linked here. With related discussion thread here where we can discuss it further



With regard to "Manual Combat" I will be looking to update this on the suggestion summary sheet