When space battles are being waged, you can see the violence in real time. You can manoeuvre your ships, position them in different formations etc. The ships fire automatically at their targets. Weapons can vary from lasers and missiles to bombs. Once the targets are destroyed, they explode and disappears.
You can also bomb/invade a planet to remove the defending forces. You can call up an overview to see the statistics of your forces and the enemy and plan your attack.
During such a planetary attack, you see a strategic grid overview of the planet. The units are white outlines but lack detailed faces, body parts, etc. The numeric scores dwindle as the battle is being waged. The outlined units also lessen in number, but no real injury or death animation is seen.