Super general design thoughts:
I assume that the length of the game is partially to allow players to not be constantly on the alert and consumed with the game. Which is really cool, but there still seem to be fairly frequent occasions where you have an hour's window or so to make a crucial decision. For example, I had an opportunity to make a defense by hiring a double agent, but I had to hire, launch, and waypoint the double agent within about an hour and a half from when the hire became available, which happened to be 11:30 PM in my time zone. (Even if I had the ability the queue the hire for when it becomes available, I would also need to be able to stick that specialist on a sub immediately.)
More generally, it seems that battle lines tend to form around a cluster of outposts which have similar distances to each other (varying by two or three hours), which means that the ideal defensive move generally has to be made within that window. (Not that big of a deal for strictly driller combat, but with the number of specialists that have drastically different effects based on whether they are defending or attacking, it can become a huge deal.) And these are scary because they can't be queued—they're conditional on actions performed by another player.
Haven't the faintest idea what to do about it, though. I can only ramble in a deranged fashion.