After mucho grande conversation with the guy at work, we've decided to integrate SC with his 3D game engine... both of which require alot of revamping, since we'd have to have the 3D engine generate missions from variables passed from the fleet encounter in Strategic engine... ie ships, formation, supply level, damage, system terrain, experience, fighter mission AI, Admiral bonuses, etc etc etc....
We will still be keeping the straight stats/strat based system for people who want to skip the tactical module.
Battles in the tactical module will be in Real Time and have a time limit of 1 day before returning to the strategic module, then back into the tactical module in the next turn.
The plus side of all this being, it'll be really really sweet. The maps themselves will roughly be 10x the size of homeworld maps and will have planetary bodies and stellar terrain that you can hide in. I'll briefly explain how this works... Let's say during an engagement, your task force is mauled, so you move the ships into an asteroid field, you then have the option of setting all ships to Passive/Silent Running mode, this reduces the chance of the enemy Scout/Patrol AI of detecting you while you make repairs (based on current supply level)
Scouting/Patrolling works like this, we're fudging the science of how sensors work (the movie/games/novels did it). On the Strategic map, you will be able to see where the enemy fleet is in a system (we're calling this "We know the general location of the fleet"). Once a tactical battle is initiated, the radar screen will show the last known position (starting) of the enemy ships on the map. This is where you have to send out fighter patrols to try and scout out enemy ships.
The minus side to all of this is, this will take a lot longer to do... especially since none of us do any 3D modelling, so if u guys wanna help out, give us a shout, we're looking for very low poly high-detail-textured models (We want biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig battles)