[Suicide Junkie]

Some people in this forum tend to believe their way of playing only strategic combat, simultaneously and against humans is the only way SE is, can or should played. But out there in the the opposite is true.

I have been in a total of maybe 10 simultaneous game combats to date. I just love tactical, myself.
However the question was about simultaneous play.

There are many good ways to implement a realtime tactical combat engine.
The ideal one for me would be stepped orders.

Take something like the current tactical combat, and resolve each combat turn the same sort of way that simultaneous game month turns are resolved now.
EG: Order your escort to move forward 2 squares, fire missiles, then retreat 2 squares. The enemy might have orders to stay put, and fire its 0.2 reload rate meson bLaster at anything that comes in range.
Once all the orders are in, hit end turn, watch the ships move and fire.
After that, your escort has 2&1/2 turn left of reloading on its missile, the missile is flying through space, and your ship has been hit 3 times, with the shield regenerator I adding one hitpoint between each hit you took (5 hp/turn = 1 hp in the time it took the meson bLasters to reload ).

Combat step size should be moddable, or even adjustable in combat. Set it to 5 se4-turns per step while charging towards the enemy, then down to small increments while dogfighting.