The main feedback i keep hearing to why fleet tactics and setup isnt more important to many players is because later in game you have so many fleets that you dont want to pay attention to them all, and they want to be able to just zoom through combat because of this. this many large fleets is due to the fact that the maps are so big now, but the fleet sizes are so small that there usually has to be dozens of fleets later in game once you have a lot of production. if this was changed so that fleets were much bigger, then there would be fewer of them later in the game and you would care a lot more about each big fleet you have. here's why i think this is very important...

the way you set you ships and fleets up should be more of a big deal i think because it's really fun for a lot of players, esp with all the custom ships that will be coming... earlier in game it's much easier to make it a big deal, because you have so few ships and fleets that each fleet is still pretty important to you, and you are more willing to spend a little time and effort to set up your fleets in a way that you think will work well for that civ. people could easily have fun with fleet tactics and setup from early on, which will let them have more fun with the combat and thus the game from early on. this type of thing was decided by the devs that it wouldnt work though, because later in game it's too much to manage with all the fleets and it would be too tedious for a lot of players. if the fleet sizes were bigger though, you would still have only a few fleets to deal with, so it would be much more fun for players to have a few big fleets to focus on, instead of dozens of fleets that the players dont really care about and never will because there's just sooo many of them...

also giant fleets having at each other would be awesome to watch in the battle viewer, and would prob help with having combat last multiple turns, which many people have expressed interest in.

If you agree that having a few important fleets to manage throughout the game would be more fun than dozens of regular sized fleets so that you could concentrate more on each of your few fleets, please comment below. The devs have said that they're looking for ideas that get a lot of player support, so if you support it please let your voice be heard! thank you