One thing I would love is the ability to test out my weapon load out (in campaign). Currently, to get an idea of what my ship can do requires me to either:
A) Guess, based on previous knowledge and stats, and hope for the best
B) Chase down and attack a weak enemy (which is near-impossible with larger fleets/ships) to get time to mess around
C) Create/use a mission involving the ship that I am testing, which doesn't take crew skill into account.
Optimally, I think we should have the ability to run practice fights. It would be nice to fight against one of my own ships (AI-controlled), to test out my weapons or shield.
If the fight were explained as being in a computer simulation, then we wouldn't have to deal with the feasibility of shooting at our own troops, and causing expensive damage to our ships. Besides, even the most primitive factions have the technology to run a computer game. I mean,
we can run said simulation on our home computers!