I thought long about this. Maybe it would be cool to have neat pictures and a much more complicated card based stats complex style board style turn based tactical battle system instead of the 3D battle RTS.

Similiar to those gold old days of rolling dice and taking hits ala StarFleet Battles.

Plus a addition layer with a player field board (somewhat like Might and Magic games) to move you ship counters around on. Like a neat chess game so to speak. I think it would add a more cerebral component to the game. After all, Star Wars Empire at War does the RTS thing any way.

What do you think? It is a bit radical departure, but do you think it would be cool?

I want to add in some basic battle engine rendered cutscenes showing the the ships firing on each other and stuff to add in that 'real time' movie feeling. Plus I would like to to do this for the Planet Assaults with Defense batteries firing at incoming ships, and troopers shooting at each other. Neat little animated cutscenes.

Well, nothing beats a good 3D space battle with ships manuevering and lasers and explosions. This is very hard to do well, however.

I think it's a cool idea, if executed right. We need to feel that our command decisions are inportant and make a real difference. Remember board games like Risk and Axis @ Allies? There was a lot of strategic depth, but no tactical control at all. A turn based tactical "mini-game" could be quite cool. I'm thinking specifically of something like Final Fantasy Tactics, here. At once simple but also quite deep with tactical complexity. I haven't played the Magic-style card games, but with some creative implementation of formations, movement, etc. it could be made to work, I think.

I'd love to hear more specific ideas about how to pull it off.

I must admit that the idea intrigues me. I have recently played two older turn based games (silent storm and temple of elemental evil) and was suprised how fun they were. However I agree with Max that it would have to be executed really well to work.

I'd probably try to draw inspiration from desktop/miniature games. Axis and Allies aren't the best example since it doesn't focus on tactical aspect, but eg. Warhammer might do it. There are also some miniature space combat games, but I don't recall any names right now.

Just some ideas:
-you don't have to use square (hexa, etc.) grid as a play board. Eg. in Warhammer or Warzone units can move by a certain amount of inches in any direction during their turn. No grid required. This could be applied easily to space (unless you want 2d battles).
-simplify the reality somehow - let's say ships can move and fire during their turn, some ships (corvettes?) could move-fire-move, others could only move-fire, fire-fire or something like that etc.
-ships could have some kind or area of control. if an enemy ship enters this area, the first ship could have a free shot at it.
-etc.

Just keep in mind that turn based games need a lot of prototyping and tweaking until they feel "right".

Anyway if you decide to further explore this area, I'd also love to hear more about it

It's an interesting idea, but it's not Rebellion. Please keep the 3D battles.

I also don't mind that the influence on the outcome that you could have in Rebellion was limited. I think it's realistic due to how slow capital ships are, and the fact that there aren't really obstacles/cover in space. I don't all that much like games when you can mess up your economy and strategy, and then win every time because your battle tactics beat the stupid AI.