I think, space combat need a little reforming after all the time the game exists now. For me, two weird combat behavior and one missing option should be adressed:
Waypoints and rubberbanding:
If you set up a waypoint to defend, this does not mean your fleet will stay there. More then often a single ship or half of the fleet, given by the situation, splits up and get pushed away to a far away location by the enemy fleet. And the player can´t do anything about it (maybe spending a lot of command points to guide it back with more waypoints). The player fleet tend to rather move away from the waypoint then to the waypoint and stay there. It does not even try. So, moving your fleet around the battle map becomes a luck thing.
It could be so simple: Give the ship code a range limit away from the waypoint, which makes the ships try to get back, if they went too far from it. Ship officer behavior should define the distance to the waypoint the ship will take.
Ships getting into field of vision of other allied ships:
Seen often enough. Even the smallest ship can nullify a capital ships frontal arms by just moving in front of it. How about coding ship ai to avoid doing that? Like stopping moving in circles around a target, when near the front of another allied ship and staying in position next to it or moving the other way?
Target selection for weapons:
As it is now, a capital ship will shoot a slow firing super weapon at a single talon fighter. This is stupid.
Can we have a target option for space weapons in the refit menue? Where we can trigger tiny, small, medium and large targets for a weapon to shoot at?
Thank you for your attention.