I definitely want to see some kind of tactical combat from Galciv3.  That doesn't mean I want GalCiv3 to be like MOO or SotS or any other game.  I think there is a lot of different ways that you can take tactical combat.  I'd just like to see GalCiv3 delve a little deeper than GalCiv2's "movie combat".

There are lots of different ways you could implement tactical combat:

1) Full Tactical turn based control (MOO2 style) - Choose every movement, choose every weapon that fires, choose your target

2) Full Real Time battles (Total War, MOO3, Imperium Galactica 2) - Choose every movement, choose your target.  Weapons mostly fire automatically.

3) Limited turn based - Choose movement, perhaps target.  Weapons fire on their own.

4) Simultaneous turn based - Both sides choose movement and targets, End turn, and the battle plays out in real time with weapons firing automatically.

5) General tactics (Star Trek: Birth of the Federation style) choose starting tactics for various groups of ships.  No direct control over movement, weapons firing, or targets.

But, you see what I mean.  In the end there are lots of options, and I'm sure lots of opinions on what people would like to see in GalCiv3.  Personally, I just want to see SOMETHING.

For me Moo2 and GalCiv are the classic 4x games. I always thought Moo2 did combat better and GalcCiv did everything outside of combat better. I've always wanted a game that had the best of both. So for all those against tactical combat. Did you not like Moo2? I think most people will agree that once you got huge fleets full of dreadnaughts it was a pain, but I still enjoyed most of the battles. With the logistics in galciv and todays tech you wouldn't have those huge fleet battles that take so long and could become so tedious.

Ideally I want combat that can do these things.

Auto resolve. I haven't run into many games where auto resolved sucked, but I guess some of you have. That is on the creators IMO to make it work well.

Options to watch the battle play out with no input from you, like the combat viewer in GalCiv2.

Option to control the combat directly Moo2 style. Boarding shuttles and capture!

Battle recorded so I can replay...and maybe this is asking too much but also the option at the end of a battle to save a copy to share or view your epic fights.

Another option for what you could argue would be "Strategic" combat but not "Tactical" combat would be something similar to "Gratuitous Space Battles".

Basically you have your starting fleet, and your opponent has his.  You have NO CONTROL over the actual battle itself.  However, the battle actually plays out realistically, instead of randomly and chaotically like GalCiv 2.

The two fleets fly towards each other, launch their long range weapons first.  Fighters swarm into the middle, then the mid-range cruisers engage, and finally your heavy ships duke it out.

You can give very loose instructions to your ships, such as to stay in long range if possible, but that's all.  Once you start the battle you have no control.

The game has a wide variety of long, medium, and short range weapons, so it's more complicated than simply the rock paper scissor of GalCiv2.

But isn't want we want is better combat. Not just tactical combat. Yes there are many ways to do tactical combat, but might there also be way to do better combat that wouldn't even be called tactical combat. Example civ5. That game's combat has a lot of elements like flanking and units with different range and even carriers. It has a fair amount of tactical depth, but it's not what you would call tactical combat.

If everyone who is against tactical combat will just sign an agreement that they also don't want a ship designer and any real focus on ships weapons/systems/etc in the tech then I will gladly give you my vote. You could reduce ships to a few 3d models representing class and combat to a simple game of who has greater numbers. The problem in galciv 2 was that the majority of the game game centered on ships and ship combat , except the combat itself. 

Seriously if your anti-tactical combat you should be first in line to ask that these things be gone and the game focus more on true strategic level mechanics.

If playing with legos was your thing more power to you but it had ZERO impact on the game. As to how much shields/speed/etc you could cram in a box/er ship it really was mostly a waste of time and nothing like eve all that ultimately mattered was how many rocks you brought versus how much paper the opponent had. This is not a choice its an illusion and theres a huge difference. And for all of us in the pro tactical battle camp this illusion is one we see right through.

Those on the other side want to have your cake and eat it; you want the illusion of gameplay and not to be bothered with a tactical level of the game. Acting like you want some pure strategy game is dishonest unless your willing to throw away the lego bricks and all the trappings that go with it, you either want a game or you want a toy. Will Wright ended his status in the game community with this for pretty much the same dilemma with Spore.

I'd hardly call tactical combat a "shoot-em-up"...

We're all getting perilously close to flamin' each other.

We should just agree that I'm right and move on.

There are far more interesting things that can be done at the strategic level than decide whether or not to get +1 to your lasers for ship combat that numbs your brain. I never said those things had nothing at all to do with "strategy" and good lord this is not an argument over what is strategic and what is tactical. Ships at both tactical and strategic levels in all of these games are an important element but they really shine when it matters in some form of tactical battle. And if you leave that out then the strategic elements they do provide become mostly meaningless and somewhat blurry as to whether there a) strategic or tactical, meaningful in any way at all c) fun.

I am actually kind ok if the game doesn't focus in any significant way on ships. Think of all the interesting things they could do at the strategic level with exploration, diplomacy, etc. The last thing we need is alot of focus on lego building of ships and +1 syndrome and tech trees mostly full of ship upgrades. I am not saying it needs to be removed completely just not a primary focus if there is no tactical game that gives you a payoff. Just abstract the ship system and focus on other things.

And yes if your acting like there is some massive strategic game play from deciding how many lasers to put on your ships versus missles your being a bit disingenuous or are kidding yourself because you do like the "toy" aspect of the ship building in galciv2. The sensor boat example is one tiny example of how it did matter strategically in galciv 2 but still there is no reason to force person to decide how many sensor points to put on a ship to add to that strategic element it also makes the ai worse, have one sensor ship type and end it there.

I suck at GC2.  I suck at Civ4 too.

I'm just bad at these games.  I like them alright, they're not my favorite but I enjoy the strategic gameplay on it's own, but I'm not any good at them.  I never have been.

I can win though, pretty easily.  I do it by exploiting the combat system.

Some of you seem to think that tactical combat results in an AI that can be exploited and thus makes the game too easy, but an automated system does too or none of you could ever beat the GC2 AI when it was cheating.  I shouldn't even be able to beat it at normal, I'm just too lazy about optimizing my output to keep up.

Where I beat it was in determining how best to minimize my casualties.  I built fleets of ships, designing them specifically with durability in mind for the primary target, and damage for the rest.  One ship that would survive, the rest of the logistics taken up in sheer damage.  It worked great.  I rarely lost ships, they gained loads of experience, and I was able to routinely fight back superior forces even though I was always way behind in research.

A bad AI does make it easy to exploit a tactical combat system, it's quite true.  It's not any different from how the predecessor is though.  The system was simple enough that it was in effect, bad AI.  It did the same thing every time, and thus in being predictable, could be countered.  The same was true of the previous stack based combat from GC1.  It always worked the same way, and was thus easy to exploit for a tactical advantage over the AI, which didn't really understand the value of it's ships and how they would be selected.  It would routinely sacrifice damaged ships of great value for no reason.

Good tactical AI is work, but so is good strategic AI.  I would not expect a bad tactical AI from Stardock, not with their recent experience.  I wont expect it to out-think me either, but without tactical combat it will just change what the AI has to out-think me on.

LOL!  I don't even know what your opinion is, but when you put it that way, it makes perfect sense.    

+1