I see you have already expressed another idea I had: auto-adjusting allocations to maintain an approval level (in your solution, a bouy). I need to come up with something clever not already thought of by Gilmoy.

I had fun micromanaging in GC2, though I didn't worry about every single fraction of a production unit as you like to. The amount of micromanagement that seems to have been introduced in GC3 is an order of magnitude greater, it seems. They (or a modder) might need to come up with a bunch of governors, though that runs the risk of taking micromanagement out of my hands.

Now that I think about it, the isolines could provide a reasonable micromanagement structure for the approval. Click the Manufacturing:Research isoline to get the right wealth allocation (thus approval) keeping your other production in ratio, then click the constant wealth isoline to vary Manufacturing and Research without having to hunt and peck for the right wealth allocation for the desired approval. Sure if they fix approval so the bonus doesn't go down in steps, there's less to worry about turn-by-turn, but you strike me as a person that would ride the 100% approval edge anyway.

I support this idea!

We have something like this planned, but it will be awhile before we have anything for players to use. 

I convinced myself that the production wheel offered more control over production compared to sliders. Today I realized I was wrong. The wheel has two advantages: allows more precision (more than 101 settings per axis) and allows me to quickly set a rough estimate of how I want my production allocated in one click.

Aside from these, the sliders are at worst equivalent. They have built-in isolines! That makes them more convenient (though again less precise) for micromanaging. Click the lock button to retain the desired value. Or if you want to retain a ratio, increase or decrease the slider not part of the ratio.

Seems to me the interface should have both the production wheel with isoline locks and sliders with locks. Oh and I don't like having to click the "Govern" button every time either. As a person who micromanages to some degree, the Governor screen is far more convenient as a default planet window than the planet map. Guess that makes me a Galactic Number Cruncher.

I also realized that adding per-planet production allocation is going to add to the micromanagement, no matter how great the UI is. I'd be more inclined to use the global allocations checkbox if I knew unused social manufacturing was automatically going to military production and unused manufacturing in general was going to wealth, like it was in later versions of GalCiv2. I realize Projects are supposed to fill that role, but the Social-Military slider heavily complicates this. I'd like to see extra production reallocation more automated and more easily accessible than having to click "Govern" and mess with the Social-Military slider.

I have another thread coming involving projects, so I'll leave that topic alone here.

Not much different than the production wheel, in my experience