Well, we have a whole 'Leadership' branch to pour skill points into. The following is my oppinion, and only that, and I do not have any reason to claim it as the right, or the correct way for the game to work.
Now, we have a few branches. Tech, Combat. And Leadership.
With this, there is the ability for the player to choose how he wants to play. And the most important for this argument is Leadership. Pouring points into leadership increases maximum fleet size, which is pretty awesome. Players who pour into this wants bigger fleets. Personally, I think it would be awesome with big fleets. The thing about too big fleets taking focus away from the player as a pilot is of course valid, but there are many ways to change that. First of all, there's numerous skills that are 'Player only'. These give pretty huge advantages. With these, it becomes hard to take away the requirement for the player to be on the battlefield, up to a certain point. Of course, with giant fleets, 1 ship begins making little difference if there's 10 other of the same type, which is why bigger ships could be a possible branch to explore as well. Even if the fleet count goes to 1000, it will be hard to take away the need of the player if he has a big, 140 point ship, with various player only buffs. Ofcourse, even then, most of it will go down to piloting around while countless guns automatically eradicate everything around you.
But in the end, it comes down to preference. Sometimes, I just feel like sitting back and looking on as my giant behemoth of a ship tears through countless enemies. Other times I might wanna get into the action. But I think it would be easy to make something so the player could choose if he wanted tactical, player in the middle, gameplay, or strategic gameplay, with something like, lets say, an options slider at the start of a new savegame.
Of course as I stated earlier, this is just my, rather uninformed I might even add, with my lack of knowledge in gamemaking and coding, opinion. It just seems like it would be easy to change the game from tactical to strategic at will with a few options. Seems.
I also want to add that I do not say this because I don't like the game. I love it and would like to see it evolve.
(Please don't hate me q.q)