Question: can you turn over that tactical stuff to the computer? I liked being able to manage the tactical fights in MoO2, but I also really liked being able to delegate when I was sure a battle was horribly one-sided in my favor.
I tried the original demo of SOTS, and it does have an autoresolve option for combat, but I had some problems where the autoresolve would preform badly in battles I should have won easily. But if you're planning to delegate the combat, SOTS probably isn't the game for you. It's really all about researching, designing, and commanding your ships. The economy and diplomacy are very simple.
What I'd like even more is a truly modern compromise for this context that let me make a moderatly complex set of initial commands for a battle and then accept the fact that, in the end, the rear echelon can only watch a given firefight and hope for the best.
Dominions 3 is a great game that does this almost exactly (in a fantasy setting). Lost Empires does it in Sci-Fi, but isn't so good.