I can't speak to future content (though a look through our previous approaches to games might provide some context clues  ), but I'll say that I agree with you about combat needing a bit more attention.  As I mentioned elsewhere, we are looking at your feedback daily.  

Frankly I liked the GC3 tradeoffs for weapon types.  Longer range missles, less accurate mass drivers etc.  I thought that was pretty neat, would like to see it come back.

Out of curiosity, what do you do at Stardock?

It feels like combat is just an afterthought sometimes.  Just like "Meh, we know you guys need to do something with those ships".  Both space combat and planetary combat need A LOT of love.  Even if more advanced combat were DLC, I'd be ok with paying for it.

I've posted ideas going back to Gal Civ 2, and the only responses I have ever gotten have been from other players who have liked my ideas for turn-based planetary combat.  Really feels like those ideas are dismissed outright when, IMHO, existing game mechanics could be adapted.

Imagine also having tech trees for ground forces (Infantry, Armor, Power Armor, Artillery).   Specializing units for bonuses (or penalties) in certain planet types (Troops trained on Desert worlds get a bonus to those worlds, but a penalty Frozen worlds).  

Actually assigning units to defend worlds by transporting them.  A planetary improvement that creates a queue for them (like the shipyard does).

Lag is my biggest complaint with GalCiv4. My system exceeds the game's physical and software requirements and when I game I close all other applications. And still lag develops. It's frustrating.

Extermination is my favorite of the X's.  Exploit for me is just a means to Extermination of the other races.

Plus I think that Exploit could be improved with combat.  More special weapons, or modules that effect how combat works.

As I've mentioned before I think the key is changing ship roles and how ship sizes work, but another interesting option  is to add more weapon systems.

One way this could be done and improve the exploitation is by making specific weapons for ship sizes that cost special resources.  The only issue with this is get the A.I. to use and understand how to use these modules.

Examples:

Armor Piercing Antimatter Dumb Rocket

Ship:  Tiny and/or Small hull

Cost: 3 antimatter and 1 Durantium 

Effect: Being a dumb rocket (That much antimatter fries the tracking systems) this weapon has a high miss chance vs tiny and small ships, medium miss chance vs medium ships, and low miss chance vs large and huge ships.

Very short range, but delivers a lot of damage to the target.  Ships carrying this weapon preferentially target huge and large ships.

Anti Interceptor Defense System

Ship: Large and/or Huge hulls

Cost: 4 Elysium and 2 Durantium 

Effect: This system has an extremely fast fire rate and medium range, but extremely low damage.

If the target is a small or tiny ship, the Defense Syste will do 10x the damage.

The ship carrying this will preferentially target small and tiny ships.

just copy the combat system from star drive 2, it will be a win

Personally, I wouldn't want to see any RTS combat elements in GalCiv IV. Turn-based gameplay with its chill pacing and lack of carpal-tunnel-inducing speed-clicking is too precious to throw away. Just to fantasize, I would rather see every battle as a puzzle minigame to be solved in the most optimal way, with preparation (ship design, fleet composition, combat roles) and the actual sequence of attacks/defenses and maneuvers being equally important. In other words, there should be a chance to win with a somewhat weaker fleet and superior tactics, as well as lose with a chunkier fleet, by dropping the ball during the battle itself.

Planet development hex minigame already feels like one such puzzle, and it's entertaining enough, even if the need to super-optimize comes up only on higher difficulty levels (only on Godlike, really). 

One example I can immediately think of is Darkest Dungeon. Seems like a long-shot at first glance, but it's a game where turn-based combat doesn't get old and never ceases to present danger. Even some modern simulated trading card games may present some ideas, especially as far as multiplayer goes.

GC4 already has a solid base with many tiers of the three weapon types. Now it's a matter of imbuing every weapon tier with unique mechanics that can be used in making interesting combos in tailored ship and fleet builds and battle tactics, not just the current linear higher-damage/higher-cost. So that depending on your preferred combat practices, weapons and defenses higher up in the tech tree might not necessarily even be what you want. Rock-paper-scissors can stay, it just can't be the most complex aspect of combat.

Visually this could all be played out in the battle viewer, one not unlike what we have right now, with the full set of options to select and control existing both in the "live" 3D movie and through simplified ship icons. I think there's a way to show the ships as if they are constantly moving even though they are actually frozen within their turn, right?

And yeah, I know, as of right now all this isn't even top priority. At this point it's probably more pressing to make the AI stop the futile single-ship spam and start assembling larger fleets.

I also don't think GC should have an RTS system as it really doesn't fit the current system in place, adds far more complexity, and slows downgameplay.  It is mush simpler to modify the current system to be more interesting, while trying to add an intuitive nature.

I've stated this is a couple places, but I still think the best way to improve the combat system is by changing the way ship roles and ship sizes work, and maybe improving carriers.

This post I wrote awhile ago is still how I would change the combat system.  I admit though this is just a first pass and would require a lot of testing 

https://forums.galciv4.com/509104/page/1/#3830841

I think this warrants its own reply, and I'm curious to see others thoughts on it, but I wanted to list what I see as the pros and cons of the current combat system.

Pros:

- Ship designer is absolutely incredible and provides nearly endless variety to battle cinematics.  It also allows for custom ship load outs which makes each ship class special.

- The battle viewer allows us to veiw the battles in 3D and generally has pretty good pathing and movement of the ships to make it look good.

- Logistics system prevents the huge doomstacks that are pointless and annoying in other 4x games

- The Rock, Paper, Scissors weapon style works well, is simple and intuitive, and covers all the basics of space combat.  GC4 also changed defenses to be more varied in the defense output which I appreciate.

- Battles are auto resolved without player input.  I know some people hate this, but I don't want to try and command battles even through starting commands like Attack, Retreat, or Hold Stance.  It would take a lot of time to get through the list of battles at the endgame.  I want to be able to just move on with my turn. Fleet design and fleet movement is where the majority of the battle is fought.  In chess, I don't play a mini game to see if my knight takes the rook.

Cons:

- Fleet design is lacking in variety and doesn't properly complement the ship designer and battle veiwer.  The main issue is that an optimal fleet currently doesn't use multiple ship sizes, but work best when they're all the same size.  This is in large part caused by ship speed and ship roles.  The ship speed often get smaller ships destroyed before the larger ones can reach the combat zone.  If we had reasons to build a fleet that used a mix of huge, large, medium, small, and tiny it would make battles look much more interesting.  Look at real world naval fleet designs. Ex. Fighters escorting a Battleship, or Bombers protected by two Frigates that can lay down flak to destroy Interceptors.

- Ship roles are currently not well understood.  The targeting system and pathing of the ships assigned different roles often leads to the loss of important ships.  In one battle I assigned multiple small ships as escorts or guardians and a large ship as a capital ship.  The enemy A.I. fleet destroyed the capital ship first which was the glass cannon I was trying to protect.  The current system really makes it difficult to understand why a ship was targeted and why a battle progressed the way it did.  I often assign each ship with the same role to avoid having them get singled out. The other problem is that it's really easy to separate the fleet into two halves that attack separately which drastically reduces the damage output of that fleet.

- The techs that give more slots to ships are uneven.  Small ships receive the same number of new equipment slots as large ships which gives them more slots per logistic point gained from that tech.  If the sizes are generally balanced at each tech, this is a small complaint that may not be important.

Thanks for listening to us Ron.  Hope to see GC4 have just as long of life as GC3.  New ship parts are always a huge plus for me in new DLC.

If there are people who are against RTS combat style.  There is always auto resolve button.... duh.  Complainers.