No, I was referring to playing other humans, SJ. Among the friends with which I play, I have the best grasp of tactics. I tend to win most of the time. The fun for them usually consists of trying to find ways to spread my resources thin by teaming up against me.
As for PBEM tactical combat, it has been a while since I've used PBEM, mainly I use hotseat. Apparently it was another game that had turn-based tactical combat that worked in PBEM games... MoO2, maybe? I know that also had PBW support. Maybe I am getting that confused and remembering networking with my brother and a few friends to play then saving the game and basically doing a few turns a night over the course of several months....
Like I said, I will give the demo a shot and see what it's like when I have access to it. I might just be over-reacting and might actually LIKE the way SEV does it, but I just am miffed at losing truly turn-based tactical combat. There are times I prefer turn-based to simultaneous for a change of pace. Feels more like a computerized board game then.
Since you mentioned strategies/designs, I am curious... is there a way to make the AI use smaller ship models instead of just sending waves of massive fleets composed entirely of its largest ship around? I like to use a mix of vessel and never truly abandon any ship size (escorts make perfect boarding shuttles). I also tend to keep a defensive fleet in every system I control (patrolling in case of cloaked ships lurking about) and all my critical planets well defended by units (obsolete models get shipped off to front lines for combat disposal and to "unimportant" colonies for SOME protection).