I am enjoying this game so far, and see some huge potential fun in the future as well.  The following are a few suggestions I have coming from GalCiv2 and wondering why certain mechanics that worked so well in that game did not make it here.

1) My first thought is to run the battles within the Tactical battle screen just like the battles in GalCiv2 happen.  Basically you have auto-battles that occur once you get into the tactical battle screen in Elemental just like ALL battles happened in GalCiv2.  One of the issues we are having here is the HUGE advantage that the attacker has in most battles, especially with the current AI.  The same thing was happening in GalCiv2 so you guys wrote the code such that all defenders got at least 1 attack off even if they were killed in an opening round.  Not sure why that code did not come along.

2) Second thing that I am surprised did not make it from GalCiv2 is having stacks of units fight individually.  An 8 man stack should fight/roll as 8 units, not as 1 super unit.  That is exactly the way that ships fought in GalCiv2, so it seems the code should work here as well.  It would be even nicer if we were able to put a bit more differentiation in Sword/Hammer/Ranged (IE having specific defenses that were better against certain attacks... ala the 3 options in GalCiv2).

3) We need a way to set basic combat orders for those tactical battles we Don't want to fight.  Things like "Place units on the board by Armor/Attack/Size/Hitpoints/Etc." or just "Don't send my lvl 2, armorless hero up against the troll when there is a 12 man stack sitting right there." I guess the command might be "Avoid Melee" or something.  It is quite a pain having to fight every tactical battle for fear the AI will choose to send my weakest unit into battle first rather than my strongest... and that is ALWAYS a hero later in the game.

4) On that note, it would be great to turn off the animations in the tactical screen.  They eat up resources like crazy and don't add to gameplay after you have seen them all 100 times.

5) Another thought from GalCiv2... is there a way to work Logistics around things like Attack/Defense, or perhaps Armor Type.  This would probably take a significant change in the current design, as units would be defined by the "type" of armor they could wear (it would add a step in unit creation, making you choose Light/Medium/Heavy armor and then choosing the specific pieces).  The benefit would be to allow you to add values to armor classes just like you did to ship size in GalCiv2.  In that way once I had learned the final logistics skill I could build a 12 man Light Armor squad, a 9 man Medium armor squad or a 6 man Heavy armor.  Or, I could mix and match as my heart desires within my point range, just like GC2.  This would work best if Idea #2 were implemented in which each unit fought independently, not as one super group.