Heh, I am torn.
Making combat reports easier to use and more helpful is the area I would most love to see development in. The area of the game that people seem to have the least control in is the combat results so being able to both learn from them and see results reasonably quickly (IE. not having to restart a 5 minute battle because you missed something) is fairly important (not just to me, I suspect).
A long log of results would satisfy one area, making it easier to analyze the results but, at the same time, contributes nothing to the speed at which one can do so.
As far as AAR's, they are nice, I appreciate reading them...but, afaik, the majority of people don't write AAR's, nor would they even do so if they had a log of combat events. If slider controls or advance/reverse turn buttons aren't possible, a text log would be an ok substitution but I wouldn't do it mainly for the sake of AAR's.
As far as needs vs. wants, don't forget that they aren't mutually exclusive. I would say that while our needs and our wants certainly can diverge, they are, perhaps even more often, the same thing.
Last comment, it's only really partly true that it's the developers game. They are responsible for, deserve credit for, and are in charge of, the code...and I am not, AT ALL, saying that any developer 'owes' gamers any continued development (except for bug fixes). That said, the game wouldn't have been distributed if people weren't buying it so let's not act as if this is freeware your friend wrote for you in his spare time and noone has any right to ask for something more in the face of such altruism.
Sorry it got long, kind of a response to a lot of thoughts that have been discussed lately
- Kel