Combat is slow paced now because the enemy AI is as cowardly as a turtle player in a fighting game. Before 0.8, skills were stronger and AI was more brave, and combat had a nice fast arcade-like pace. Today, it is about as fun as trying to flush out a turtle or camper.
Overall combat speed, in terms of how fast ships and missiles move, is agonizingly slow (for me) at normal speed. It is possible to speed up (or slow down) the game by changing a settings file. (I set speed to double. Would set it higher, but there may be problems.) Other games are faster and feature toggles to speed up the game.
However, ships are fairly sturdy now (and skills are weaker than they were), it is hard for many ships to punch above their weight. Currently in 0.8, carriers are more powerful than other ships, but few non-carriers are useful to defend carriers. Carriers are wizards, and non-carriers are warriors. Also, non-carriers can be given a flight deck to become a less efficient carrier - a magic knight.
There are time limits in battle. Before 0.8.x, you would only see them if you tried to solo everything. Now you see them frequently due to cowardly AI trying to outmaneuver and swarm the other side.
Maybe in the next major release, game balance can shift drastically like it had for previous releases.