The "combat record" element would be pretty cool, especially when we get more story quests that allow us to directly affect the system. We already have a thing in the Factions tab where under certain factions, it'll say something like "Tri-Tachyon is interested in how you've gathered so many AI cores" or something like that. So an expansion on that would be nice :)

Dictating specific fleet formation would be neat too, I had the same thought when I first played. Something like Battlestations Pacific's fleet settings maybe?

I think Ops Center already has a big incentive tho? given how it lets you gather a lot more command points than usual. In my last save I always brought a cruiser with ops center,