So there has been lots of talk about balancing fleet combat etc. I always thought the system from Gal Civ 3 would actually work pretty good if it was just tweaked a little bit. The ship roles are a great idea, they just need to adjust how they interact with each other a little bit.

For example:

Assault ships go straight for support ships, then capital ships, then whatever is left. They start on the first (front) line.

Interceptors go straight for assault ships, then capital ships, then whatever is left. They start on the first line.

Escorts go for assault ships, then interceptors, then capital ships, then whatever is left. They can "delay" any of these ships from reaching their designated target by one turn. They start on the second line.

Capitol ships go for capital ships, then assault ships, then interceptors, then whatever is left. They start on the third line.

Guardians and support ships start on the fourth line. Guardians will engage anything that attempts to attack support ships, delaying the attackers by one turn. Guardians and support will fire upon anything that wanders into range, but they don't actively seek to engage.

Basically it is pretty similar to the Gal Civ 3 ship roles, just with modified targeting priorities; and there isn't anything that can completely stop ships from engaging their priority target, just slow them down for one round.

All the basic coding for this is already here, imported from Gal Civ 3, so I doubt it would really be all that hard for the devs to modify a little bit. I could be wrong though, I'm not a programmer.

Happy Bug Squashing !