With all respect I sadly agree. Mass drivers that float like dandelion seeds and change direction?   

Ships nodding their heads up and down like bobble-head dolls?   

Ships shooting THOUGH friendly ships?    

Well, graphics wise, I love the game for its strategy (infrastructure, sciences, economics, etc). If better graphics came at the price of crashes or affected gameplay, no thanks. If not, sure, nicer battle graphics would always be welcome. They remind me a lot of a game I played and loved, Star Control.

Related: I'd sure like more strategy options. I recently had a battle where two large fleets went head to head, my 11 Terran Alliance ships against nine or so Korx vessels. The bulk of their fleet were smaller fighters, with one dreadnaught-class battleship. I wiped up the fighters easily until only two remained, and their battleship. I had about five or six ships left. To my dismay, I watched them try to destroy the battleship - they could barely dent it due to its superior armor - while their fighters, which we could easily destroy, were ignored and free to fire on our rear. Needless to say, I think had they mopped up the fighters and then concentrated on the battleship, I stood a chance. As it is, we lost.

I kept madly clicking on the fighters trying to redirect my ships fire to them, but no dice, heh.

I'm sure its also been asked elsewhere, but I'd like to see a "Retreat" option. If you've got better engines, or smaller ships, you should be able to run. Does ship mass slow vessels at all (that is, put heavier requirements on engines?)

The Dark Avatar battles are much improved. They could probably use some work, especially on the cameras, but the sounds and graphics look better and line up better with special effects (explosions, deaths). Also, the ships move much more convincingly, with engine trails to boot. It can actually be a bit of a treat to watch now, which is a welcome improvement.

It stills needs work. The camera often glitches out at the end of a battle, for instance, and all mass driver weapons fire off in some bizarre direction (yet still manage to hit). Sometimes the camera simply refuses to show the interesting parts of the battle (in cinematic mode). Overall, though, its a huge improvement, and it's still in beta, so there's tons of room for them to be resolved.

In Dark Avatar, a lot has been improved in the battle viewer including targeting, ship motion, animations, etc.

CodeCritter, can the battle viewer improvements be applied to a DL update?

It would be complicated, but it would be cool if a ship had vital points. Say, hitting it in the engines compared to hitting a well armored point. Put simply, a ship would have weak points.

since I was just coming off Civ IV it was a bonus

CivIV.... that's not saying much. I have played all the civilisation games and was always delighted until playing civIV. What a flop! Mainly because artilery units got turned into bombardless uniks (however you spell the word).

I think they are done fairly well and could use a bit more, but not really necessary.

However... If anything in the graphics area needs to be addressed, it would be the ground assaults.

Blech!

Overall, I like the battleview very much. For a couple of games I made 'game-examples' and made screenshots for important battles. Especially when spending a lot of time on designing new ships it's very nice to watch them in action.

I hope that with the pending improvements the battleviewer will only get better!