The combat roles are cool and all, but they are inferior to a much simpler system.
Maximize damage- ship charges the enemy at full speed in order to maximize damage. Pretty much what all ships do now.
Maximize range- ship engages the enemy at the max range of its longest-range weapon, then falls back.
Minimize damage- ship attempts to stay out of range of the enemy.
Now add on top of this some risk/reward in regards to weapons and engagement ranges so that close-quarters weapons have a significantly higher DPS. There is no need for these roles, most of which make no sense anyway.
Surely you also need an escort role replacement? I.e. "protect these ships from the enemy"?
I have been playing for a while with the handicap of not building any carriers (because, let's face it, they are so powerful they are boring). To compensate the power gap I have been using the combat role mix "capitals+escorts" to implement the old tactical maxim of specialized attackers and defenders. That should be a valid tactical option in any combat simulation whether it's medieval pikes+bows or wet navy carrier+AAW-cruisers, or the system is missing something very basic...
Though, your observation has merit. The current ship roles are too complex for the available ships and tactics you can implement with the current ship components. I think that qualification is needed because the problem lies there. We need ship components and new ship combat behavior that would utilize the combat roles to their full potential. It's a nice, flexible system that would allow all kind of things but there's currently no meat with what to fill its skeleton.
For example, we are missing ships that would try to quickly get past enemy "nuisances" in order to hit and kill soft, valuable targets. Which would incidentally also be a "carrier counter" thus solving that issue in the game.
Edit: And BTW, please, don't add any active combat time user involvement to the tactical battles. Really. This is a TBS game. If I wanted to play an RTS game I'd buy one. There are tons of space-themed space RTS games out there but precious few good TBS ones. Don't ruin this one. If you add tactical options that can be preset and applied before the combat is played out, that's fine, but adding a mandatory click-fest to the tactical combat screen isn't.
Switch your hat from "captain" to "admiral". You give your orders and send your captains in and trust them to execute them and to respond in intelligent manner to whatever the enemy happens to do. As the saying goes 90% of most battles are decided before they start.
