Camera in Combat

That would raise it on the Swanky Scale.

Ooh, that's something I've been missing too.
It's not just a swanky thing either (Though it would indeed be incredibly swanky) - if you're trying to attack installations around planets and the like, it'd be awful nice to see the satellites 'behind' the planet without going to overhead view. If only so you don't miss out on the eyecandy.

Most of the combat effects are actually two-dimensional bitmaps rather than true 3D objects. If the camera were allowed to rotate freely then the illusion of 3D is more difficult to maintain. That's one explanation. Another is that a fancy camera is nice to have, but farther down on the priority list than bug fixes.

The 2D effects system is very nice for modders, since you can add your own explosions, beam weapons, projectiles, etc... without needing a 3D modeling program.

Assuming that tactical combat is 3D rendered, then the 2D graphical effects such be textures placed on billboard polygons. That is, a polygon that always faces the camera. I suppose it could be a mix of 2D and 3D display, but if it isn't, camera rotation shouldn't be too difficult.

That works for things like weapon explosions and projectiles, but effects such as the ring explosion (ship death) would look wrong when rendered with that method. If you could rotate the camera then it would be very apparent that it's just a 2D effect. There may be other effects which are also sensitive to rotation.

Also, since SE5's effects are rendered with the Z buffer turned on, it may not always be as simple as turning the bitmap toward the camera. Camera rotations might cause odd clipping of effects where there was none before.

But all this is probably moot; I suspect the camera controls are basic just because it was a low priority.

IIRC, Aaron mentioned in a chat log a while back that adding different camera angles during battle is on his list of things too do, but after he conciders the game patched well enough.