1, 4 and 5 are right, I think.

2: One exception: your rule only applies when all ships had full hit points before combat.

3: The targets in combat are determined by their attack value, current strength and defense value, I think. So adding functional modules like weapons to the ship can affect this chance, purely graphical things won't.

6: I think it's possible to know a race that nobody else knows, but this won't last long usually.

2: One exception: your rule only applies when all ships had full hit points before combat.

Yes, true. But still, when all the ships are at full health, only one is damaged at the end...

5) and 6) I don't understand what do you mean by "know a race"

Well, after you discover another race you know about it. Others don't need to be aware of it's existence, right?

Crap, YES, but these are all marginal cases.

The point was that after a fight you will never be left with a crippled fleet (OK, unless only one ship is left and this one is damaged or there are more of them and the rest were damaged before etc. ).

aw bummer, whole fleets mob up on one unit at a time? i thought it would be cool ships just paired off and engaged eachother randomly. battle sequences would look very cool. anyways, i figure the game has already computed the outcome of the battle by the time it has started

And it is more efficient to concentrate all fire on a specific target

In Galactic Civilisations that is correct. Otherwise it's not. AGAIN I'm mentioning Nexus and I sort of wish it would be the last time. But the battles are just so phenomenal it's hard to forget.

In Nexus you have weapon types;
- shield destroying weaponry
- hull destroying weaponry
- devices destroying weaponry (powerfull lasers, fighter crafts, boarding craft)
- missiles
- point defences.

Ships have shields, so you need to destroy those first - unless you are destroying individual devices like engines or something.

So some of your weaponry is firing at the shilded ships, other weaponry at the ships with their shields down, lasers firing at devices you wish to disable, your point defences are firing at incoming missiles and gunboats, your missiles are flying towards distant targets (since they would destroy your own ships as well if exploding too close), ALL AT THE SAME TIME (if you have enough power on the ship). And all with totally realistic movement (physics).

In this case it would be a waste of energy to fire with all weapons at the same target, since hull destroying weaponry would do practically nothing against shields and are better fired at a target with shields down or not at all to save energy, your gunboats would be thrown away against ships with good point defences etc. etc....

I guess you see the picture. Definitely a treat of a space opera.