The pre-battle set up refers to the composition of your fleet. If you engage in a battle with only battleships with high fire power and lots of hit points, you may get beaten by fleets with less fire power because although they fewer capital ships (battleships), their fleet has a better composition of escorts, interceptors and support ships bringing up the rear carrying offensive and defensive modules that accrue benefits to all the fighting ships in the fleet.
It sounds like it will be fun to put together the right combination of ships to win. At this point we don't know how well the AI will use this strategy and/or mine the resources needed to build the support ships. It will definitely add to multi-player.
Fun or not, I doubt this meets the criteria for strategic play. The player will have no control over the ships. You build the ships and put them together in a fleet. You push a button and watch them fight. You might say it is something like building a fast car and watching a pro driver race it. You had everything to do with making it fast and race worthy but nothing to do with driving it. I like that, but some would not be happy if they weren't behind the wheel. I get that
