[Taqwus]

At least in single-player mode, strategic combat gives you -

- A view of dots flying around. Not too informative, but sometimes useful since you might notice fighter/missile launches. Also, you might catch the initial enemy formation and probable orders.

- A report of what ships and planets were involved, along with ship class (IIRC), ship design, and how much damage was sustained. You do NOT get any information on unit (mine, fighter, satellite, weapon platform, or troop) numbers, classes, placement or casualties, but you might get their designs (don't recall).

You therefore have most of the information you need to plug 'em into the simulator (potentially a very useful tool, since it'll let you see how your designs might fare against the enemy before you even build a single instance, and how different fleet organizations and orders work).

In tactical combat, you can always hit 'resolve' and watch (in full detail) what the AI would do. I *think* you'll get the same results as with strategic combat, minus variance due to randomness and any tweaking you did before handing over control.

You will, however, in certain cases get MUCH superior results if you manage the battle yourself in tactical. So ship designs meant for this will not necessarily do nearly as well in strategic combat during a multi...

BTW, on limited resources per planet, there is a 'finite resources' option. Expand, expand, expand...

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night