Above @XKurareX Makes an excellent point, I mean, Squads are squads, 5 on 5 makes sense. But with fleets, and not just fleets, but with massive capitol ships, the reduction down to 3 on 3 just doesn't pass the "sniff test."
Why not have full 9 on 9 combat or something... with sat 4 forward ships and 5 sitting around your capitol ship being protected by auto-turrets. Back ships can be brought up to the front line, fire from where they are, park in the cap ship for repairs. Cap ship should be able to take a defensive action and an offensive action each turn - I mean... it's not like Tarkin alone is running that thing... it can do multiple things at once.
I'd love to see some actual motion in combat - place your ships, or troops, where they get access to other abilities or tactics (kind of like when you do the Thrawn lead).
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Or maybe have a new slot, Squadrons. Gold Squadron (reb), The Emperors Sword (imp), Hammer Squadron (republic) ect. a bunch of ships - you can apply them to any regular ship in game. They'd, essentially, be like mods except not random - you need to farm up squadrons, level them etc.
Then they boost stats of the main ship, or have other special abilities (maybe one can auto-remove target lock - then it's on CD for 4 turns before it can do it again) - but this would at least open it up to look like fleets attacking, it would feel like a fleet battle, it's be a simple way to go from 5 ships to scuffing that into like 30 ships.
Because they add to, enhance, maybe give another action to the ship there - it doesn't add more turns or anything.
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TL:DR; I'm just throwing spaghetti on the wall, so to speak, but my point is going smaller in fleets is just weak. It's like, people were really paid to think through ships... and... uh.. this is the best you could come up with?
https://media1.tenor.com/images/054c4944acaa2467d39278201f6a684d/tenor.gif
I'm all for ship battles being faster, but in regards to making ships better, I don't think think this is the answer you're looking for.
