What would you like the combat to be like?
Published on Friday, August 16, 2013 By
Personally I'd be happy continuing the top-down view. (with more than 16 directions) 
One cool improvement would be the ability to have multi-ship battles. Maybe you control your flagship, and choose one wing-man to take into each battle. Or each race has a range of ships, from fighters to cruisers, and you control the flagship, while the other ships around you battle it out. One thing that always bugged me about SCII, was you never felt like a giant fleet of allied races, with the 1 on 1 battles.
It would also be cool if you "escorts" could participate in more ways. Having certain allied ships in your fleet could open up options in conversations, or talk directly to other races with you. They could have specific actions during planetary exploration.
Ish like that.