I was scanning some of my neighbours stars, using the battle calculator to find the weak spot when I thought how handy it would be to have a more ‘intelligent’ battle calculator. One that automatically knew who the attacker and defender was and applied to correct weapons levels etc.
Perhaps even a ‘to win’ label when clicking on another players stars.
I’d like that too, perhaps just change the color of the “you can jump here” highlights depending on whether you will win or lose the battle if you jumped there (taking into account any ships you can scan that are headed for that star, and the star’s production).
Likewise, when there are fleets jumping to your star it would be nice if you could just glance and see if you would win or lose, taking into account your production and all the ships you can scan which are currently jumping to it.
I’m sure there will be folks who say taking that all into account is part of what makes a good player, but it’s boring – seems like the game should be about the decisions you make not about the numbers you crunch.
Caveat: when I do these calculations I always add one to my opponents weapons level, just in case. I’d want to be able to have this mechanism do so as well.
I am not suggesting that everything is worked out for us. The battle calculator is already there, I just think it would be great for it to do a little more.
I agree the calculator could be better. Apparently in Subterfuge you can simply drag a carrier to a star and it will tell if you will or not. That sounds like a much better interface to me!
On the same topic (to avoid creating a separate thread), a simple addition that would help a lot is an option to set time of battle. The calculator is many times useless, since by the time your attack get’s there, and even with no reinforcements, new ships will be there. I always give it a little leeway, but it would be nice to know if new defenders will be produced in transit (and how many). This small fix is one more field, no true revolution 
I always do the math on the side, calculating how many ships the star is going to build (at it’s current rate) by the beginning of a battle. If Jay is ever able to add in the interface he just mentioned, he should include that in the calculation…