2) A capital ship with an ion cannon, capable of great damage. This ship would be huge and slow, but with this powerful weapon. The balance would be guaranteed by high cooldown time and by the fact that only one cannon ship could be built per player
Aside from the Radiance, i don't think we need to turn this game into a Homeworld clone, SSE is its own game and lets please keep it there.

As for the more dynamic battles, do you have any idea how much more micromanagement you'd need for that to work.

This is considerably easier to control, which is what matters in the end. You send a fleet somewhere and if you feel the need you can quickly hop in and control things, with dynamic fleet movement i feel you'd need to shortcut all elements of a fleet and micro each to keep things going in the right direction. Which is not what SSE is about.

Its about combining 4X and RTS, not turning it into micromanagement hell.