This came out of a game where I developed Planet Construction. The automated colony leaders went insane. They started mass building the Planet Construction and even went so far in a system that started with 2 planets, 2 gas giants, and an asteroid belt, as to build a spare constructor. The Leader didn't care that the asteroids were feeding the production of his world, the gas giants producing helium. And, once built - THERE IS NO WAY to cancel a constructor without reloading a save. I have since gone back to skipping automation and started micromanaging. - In the Build queue, allow items to be ticked as never build. Maybe a checkbox in the corner? - Allow a priority pre-build list. A 'Build X, then Y, then Z' as a new world default - Leaders get confused when a world is developed and crank out endless freighters and support ships. SSP sucking options in the late game. Ship construction should have some consideration for SSP remaining. Maybe allow a 'Never use SSP below XX or X%' ?
Thanks for your suggestions. Hehe, I feel you may be more of a micromanagement type of player The colony automation will never be perfect. If we start adding more options to control the colony automation we will soon be micromanaging the colony governors instead, so perhaps it would be best to just manage the colony in that case. I understand it may not seem ideal for a colony governor to start a planet construction project on an asteroid belt that is being exploited. However, that's why the colony is automated, to make those kind of decisions. There are times when that may be a good call. That said, I can see that being an issue in some cases and that you should probably make the call on those kind of decisions involving settled asteroid belts and gas giants. I will add that suggestion to the big list and it may be considered at some point. There are several colony automation focuses. Maybe you could try going with a more specific focus than 'balanced' for some of your colonies. The balanced focus will build all sort of things. Maybe you can set some colonies to something more specific like military ships, civilian ships, population growth or money. That way you are more in control because the things the colony is allowed to build or do will be more limited. The colony governors should only build freighters when there is a sensible number of exploitations that could use them. It is also programmed to not go on the red on the SSP. As for Support Ships it shouldn't build more than a handful at which point it will stop building those.
Admittedly, that game went long. ~350 turns. I had about 11-12 colonies. Six large, and about 10 medium, belts feeding production to my fleet builder worlds. All other belts were on RP. Immigration in play. And the freighters were at +7(27) with a new one popping every few turns. I was using 4 support ships on my only new colony and the leaders built 3 more. I wasn't really paying attention but had budget planned my SSP for my new Titan, which came out of the yards to a sudden -SSP. The leaders didn't build at -SSP, but they nibbled away the SSP I was planning on using.
