The developers have repeatedly said there will be no tactical combat in the game.  Us fans didn't just make that up, you know.

Never heard. May be that I never wanted, but I really don't remember that. I do remember Brad announcing exciting things in battles early on.

Though assigning roles to ships etc. does fit the role a player of a strategy game should have much more than giving movement orders.

Sure, Start or Auto-resolve

They have said often and in several languages, there will be no tactical combat.

You are setting yourself up for disappointment by continuing to hope for it.

Ship roles are assigned automatically on designing now, space voyager. They have said in no uncertain terms that there will not be player control during combat.

In Space voyagers defense there was some kind of pre-battle setup screen or something mentioned by frogboy at some point.  The question is that particular piece still in development and will be coming as we near release or is that been dropped.

  Link to the frog boy's quote is below.  

http://steamcommunity.com/app/226860/discussions/1/35221031569673689/

Two Brad's posts:

https://forums.galciv3.com/451740/page/2/#replies

https://forums.galciv3.com/452054/page/1/#replies

Both imply pre-battle setup of some kind. Not direct clicking, but more than just assigning roles to ships.

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