The SE5 system view isn't unusable, but it is certainly very wasteful of screen space.
SE4 showed who was present and how many ships they had, using only a 24x10 pixel area.
SE5 gives you the choice of illegible blobs at 50x30 pixels or gigantic blocks that blot out the view of multiple hexes.
We should bug Aaron to use 2D text, like Starfury had, instead of this huge, blurry 3D stuff.