| Why is GC IIs tactical combat part so poor? |
Because there is no such thing. GC2 does not have tactical combat; battles are just based on attack, defense, and HP, and are resolved automatically, as you say. The combat viewer is basically just a 'replay' that lets you see how exactly each ship performed.
Due to popular demand, tactical combat is under consideration for GC3. The biggest reason it hasn't been done in GC up to this point is simply because there exists no tactical AI in a game that can even remotely compare to a human. Because the tactical AI is so poor in most every game that has one, you can make up in combat for doing very bad in every other part of the game. As well, players feel forced to play out the tactical battles even if they don't want to, because letting the AI auto-resolve them would result in far greater casualties (if it wins at all) than if the player played them himself.
So basically, whether or not future GC games get tactical combat depends solely on whether Brad (GC's creator and AI dev) can make a tactical AI that he is satisfied with--one that can both truly challenge a human, and do just as well against itself as a human would.
If you want to talk about the possibility of tactical combat in GC, or how you'd like such a beast to work, check out the
official TC discussion thread.
