Hey,
I'd just like to preface this by saying that this is a bloody excellent game and I'd love to see where it goes. Far too many spaceship games assumes that the player wants to be the fighter pilot, running light, fast maneuverable ships around and cackling with glee as they destroy half a dozen huge, lumbering capital ships. There's not nearly enough spaceship games that reckon that maybe the player wants to be the captain, not the pilot.
Anyways, on to the suggestion. At the moment, there's a spot of a learning curve to the game, with some things needing hard experience to learn. I would suggest that in order to make it easier to learn how to play the game, one-on-one duel missions should be implemented. These would allow players to get a better idea of how to fight a ship without having to worry about fleet strategy or other ships mucking things up, as well as also allowing players a closer look at exactly how particular ships handle and what they're capable of - at the moment, it takes guesswork and close attention to a couple of battles to learn exactly what a frigate (for instance) can take on with some hope of either success or at least damage.
The duels can be implemented either using the current mission system (with the player tossed into either a mirror match or an enemy of equal power) or could be implemented by allowing the player to select which ship they want to fly and which ship they want to fight. I'd prefer the latter myself, since it'd also allow players to figure out how well smaller ships match up to larger ships, but I understand it's probably trickier to code.
Also, side note, this is a really, really long-term and probably costly idea, but assuming it doesn't muck up existing UI audio cues too much (at the time of implementation), it'd be neat if your bridge officers confirmed orders verbally throughout the battle. So you might get something like this during a battle:
"Aye sir, raising shields!"
"Firing Weapon Bank Four!"
"Full power to thrusters, aye!"
"Flux raising to critical levels!"
"Aye, sir, venting flux!"
And so on. This wouldn't actually be for purposes of informing the player so much as it is immersion - the idea of listening to constant, almost incomprehensible battle chatter during a fight tickles me. Of course, I understand that voice-acting is expensive, takes up megabytes, and that if implemented in this way has the potential to "clutter up" the actual interface and audio cues, so it's more of a "this would be cool" thing than an actual suggestion. Still, it WOULD be cool.
Edit: Oh, yeah, and a "Defend This Position" order for the tactical map would be ace. I want you idiots to mass the fleet in preparation for an attack, not to go charging off the moment you arrive at the destination! :argh: