I can approve or find peace over many of those decisions. The tabletop had many features removed or altered to make the alpha's systems. Does it help sell the experience? Not really. This would be akin to two of the weakest stacks with large numbers going toe to toe in Wrath of the Righteous over many rounds. Right now, the game has you simply trading hp until your larger pool wins. Each phase of the combat should be a question that can be answered with how to end the combat faster beyond hitting end turn. Your attacks need to have something like status effects, the ability to cripple enemy ships, boarding actions, ramming, ect. The game would really benefit from one of the tabletop systems here. Nothing is really spicing things up, cooldowns on your strongest attacks means you spend turns doing subpar and boring damage but you still need to do it to rotate your shields properly and maneuver for the missile volley. You have a large hp ship with limited ability to shoot in any one direction that generally needs multiple rounds or a volley of missiles to actually kill something and most combats are against many foes so you have to do the dance over and over again. It feels needlessly slow, tedious, and overly reliant on the companion abilities. Got to say, at least so far as the alpha shows it, I haven't really been enjoying ship battles.
