Realtime or turnbased tactical combat?

[HP Delron]

I might add for real time combat, since more of the games time units pass in a real time situation. The putting in of weapons that would take too many turns to scale out properly (such as extremely low power, rapid fire weapons).

[Suicide Junkie]

True, all those gatling cannon components can be one big gatling cannon in a realtime combat environment.

See P&N-ism mod for Starfury to see such stuff in action

[Q]

I can understand both sides pro and contra real time combat.
Although I rarely use tactical combat at all in "real" games (tactical combat with more than 10 ships gets painful anyway) I think it is an important part of SE and especially to test some Mods I found tactical combats essential.
In my opinion the key point is what you can do or can't do during the pauses. If you can target and give movement orders then real time combat is an improvement IMHO. Hovewer if these two action can't be performed during pauses then I would prefer the old turn based combat.

[Slick]

I agree with Q completely. I'd also point out that, just based on numbers, most people who own SE:IV don't play multiplayer so tactical combat is probably more widely used when viewed over all game owners.