OK I'm  going to look at the command screen next time I play. You see this is why I suck at this game and have to play on beginner.

You have a single global option but I'm guessing you mean to setup templates to switch to. I would love this as well. 

I have not found the governors useful yet.  Some examples:

I can't put the shipyard on repeat for transports because it drains my population.  So, I intersperse transports among the other items in build cues so the turn count isn't too short between transports.  I end up having all shipyards on manual control.  If there is a different way to handle this, I haven't found it.

If I tell all shipyards building a mk3 cruiser to build the new mk4 cruiser, do I change the current build?  Does it replace things in the cue?  This is an example of not knowing what to expect from the governors.

I can't use "send all ships from this shipyard" function because I produce a mix of civilian and war ships from each shipyard..   I don't necessarily want to be sending civilian ships to the war zone. This is aggravated by the fact that I hand build cheep constructs everywhere. Also, I need to send different types of ships coming from a single shipyard to different rally points.  Otherwise, my fleets end up with an unplanned jumble of transports, battle ships and supprt vessels.  Sorting it all out at the other end is a mess.

Once, I set up a set of rally point commands:  All transport go here, all cruisers go here, all support go here.  Three rally points next to each other.  When a new ship launched, I would send it somewhere close to the field of action on the minimap.  Every five turns I issued the rally commands again.  Eventually, everybody ends up in the right place.  That was the best I could come up with.

So far, I can't make it fit what I think are normal or needed actions.

I hesitate to have something so complex it is actually a programming language of commands, but it does need to be more robust somehow.

I like the ability to give global orders to ships, but it needs expanding to custom planet governors.

eg.

This planet (production wheel setting) is an 'xyz' world

Then when we colonise a new planet,

I designate this planet a science world or a balanced world or a manufacturing world etc.

Then we could do:-

All planets designated as science switch to manufacturing

or

All planets switch to designated settings.

This would give us the flexibility we have now without the micromanagement.

The AI should be able to do this on the fly.

The conquest/influence victories are by far the easiest on small maps. On larger maps you cannot end the game quickly through conquest or influence, so the other options become more viable. In my opinion the research victory is a bit too tough, because you basically have to research 80% of the techs (or even more) to get it and this is always slower than e. g. an ascension/military combo.

I would love to see a turn time limit (at least for mp), so you are forced to reduce your micro to important stuff.

I've been playing on the larger map sizes lately and while I'm know where near as good as you guys seem to be against a gifted AI I'm not having issues with mirco managing unless I suddenly gain alien world via conquest and influence at a silly rate as you can't track the them properly and they kinda have no meaning to you. Influence is a massive problem for this as you can suddenly gain 10-20 planets in different parts of the galaxy and you've got no clue what's going on. I name my planets in groups depending on there solar systems location so I can create a mental visualisation of where they are and what's going on there which is hugely important to planning. I then build a Shipyard for each group which is 3-5 planets though I don't do this on my outlying systems as I don't like my production to be easily targeted especially in terms of non combat vessels. I feel I might be doing something amiss with Star bases however as I don't tend to build anywhere near the amount I see in photos, I grab all resources I can normally doubling/tripping up as well as crystals and relics, then If its a edge system boarding a hostile AI I build Influence/cross military bases in key locations which will be the hubs for my defence fleets. Every group of planets also have a Sensor ship at the edge of its influence these are not only equipped with as many sensors as I can physically force on but also are as fast as I can make them so they can flee from hostile actions while keeping them in sight, they are normally fast enough to completely out flank the opposing fleet without any chance of being caught meaning I don't even leave a hole in my vision range.

I'm interested to how you guys go about conquests however as fleet wise I build up protective fleets for each group of planets though these are not exactly strong being pretty much medium, small and tiny vessels I can use to reinforce if I get attacked by a strong force though that's yet to happen as despite having being declared war on in every game the AI as never been actively aggressive with anything but small forays or skirmish fleets which these forces can crush these like constructors, colony ships and transports are made locally. Once I've got defence fleets everywhere I decide where I going to attack and build around five fleets with the best ships I can produce built where I can combine manufacturing and military buildings to provide additional boosts these  ship yards don't tend to worry about constructors, colony ships and transports building capitals, carriers and prototype vessels constantly to make sure I maximise my potential in build speeds. Then I go at one AI on one front with absolute focus cleaning away anything that's been offered thus far without any engagements being near to closely matched while my defence fleets remain in location to cover against any counters elsewhere in the galaxy. Anyway from what's been described above it seems like you guys are fighting with dozens of fleets at the same time and building tons more star bases than I am.

In my current game however I'm not sure of the turn count but the leading AI's have 30-50 colonies while I'm in 3/4th with 20ish to which I've only got around 8-9 star bases and I'm barely beginning to build military ships and thats only because I've just had Drengin declare war on me but they are not close to my space as far as I can tell so I'm not concerned and I've got good relations with the closer empires, but if anything at the moment I'm often finding myself saddened that I've got so little to do on my turns, as I have little in the way of fleet movement beyond my sensors spreading out and moving new colony ships to grab high value worlds on the edge of my empire or if none are present low value ones inside my empire, I've still not colonised the lvl3 planet in my starting solar system for that reason though it will likely see me catch up with the leading AI's in number of colonies once I've done so. Noticed Empire penalties can quickly become difficult to handle especially in the first age of technology so I feel that approval and influence techs are really critical at stopping your empire becoming a logistical nightmare and I always try to draw populations from planets getting too big for my tech levels ability to pacify. I am however really cautious of too much influence because I do not like influence victories in this game at the moment as once they get going the massive tidal wave of colony absorption is way too fast leaving me bombarded by new planets I do not have compartmentalised and in smaller maps you win before you've really got any idea what's going on. There's no conflict its just a influence wave of assimilation, which once gets going seems beyond the AI to stop.

Anyway I've just waffled on saying pretty much nothing other than the only time I've been finding it micro intensive is when getting influence victories though that's likely as much to my very structuralist logical play style as much as anything else.

I am imaging a screen with the game map on it and dots representing shipyards and other dots being other factions ships. Knowing the location and when the shipyards are building would be more intuitive yes?

Zingo, you are spot on regarding the command functions. I haven't used it because I haven't been able to understand it well enough to get it to do what I want it to do.

Actually, it just seems easier to do it on the shipyard since I only build one shipyard per 5 planets and I play with rare habitable. I usually only build 5-6 shipyards. 

On the colonies, they should add a tab for discovered and uncolonized planets and a command to send colony ship, similar to the command for constructors to the star bases.

Quoting Waervyn,

reply 44

I agree on most points, but you keep saying you have to send constructors manually. Did you know you can click on the starbase and 'request constructors'? This queues up constructors that will automatically fly to the starbase. once they arrived you'll get a notice about it. Just in case you didn't know

As far as I can tell, that only works with the stock pre-designed constructors. I don't need to be wasting production points on constructors with life support modules to go to a starbase I already own - I want it to build my design with max engines, no life support, no sensors and the relevant number of constructor moduled that the starbase needs, not "Build M6" which has a range of 65 gazillion hexes for no apparent reason

That might explain why that feature never worked for me. I NEVER use the prebuilt ship designs. I ALWAYS obsolete them immediately and build my own much better versions. I kept getting an error popup something like "you cannot build constructors at this time" whenever I clicked on "request constructor". I never understood why that happened, but now it seems it was complaining that no default design constructors could be built, ignoring the several varieties of my own construction ships.

With respect to a potential AI Governor for planets... I have also not heard any specific detail.

However, I mocked up a change to the Colonies management screen, in conjunction with the creation of a Economic Governor (which remembers production wheel settings). Personally, I think something like this would go a long way towards making it easier to get an overview of your empire's settings, and make changes quickly.

PS - this does not get rid of the production wheel, just makes it easier to use.

Mockup: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bgxo3peapxpeso2/GC3%20Colony%20Management%20Screen.JPG?dl=0

Original post: https://forums.galciv3.com/466013