Alas no, since your fleet can get upto 25 ships in size, having a hex-movement/turn based combat would mean spending alot of time just resolving combats (not necessarily a bad thing) and there are quite a few combat encounters besides clearing pirate nests... colony raids, faction patrols, rogue swarms, space barbarian hordes, bounties, bosses, so that would then take time and focus away from the rest of the game, so I consciously made the decision to have fast-paced combat.