If that is really the case, some devs should be looking for new jobs, like management positions in EA. You want to dumb this game down? Make it more mainstream? EA is the studio for you. Go make bad games with them. I will not be paying for an expansion with EA like quality. 

If the production wheel is a problem for most people, tweak the AI to compensate, and make normal beatable with a default wheel. No need to touch that stuff at all really for the main game. Then we can balance the rest, or Frogboy sometime in the future hopefully

i somewhat agree to it but i think changing it woulde be best. 

And for that i suggests maybe split the sliders into 4 parts, not one big circle but rather 4 lists, so you can scroll down and see what the planets produce most of.

(three lists splited up for economy,manufactory,research one for each.) 

Depending on what it produces at the moment and what type of production building has been made on it (economy,manufactory,research building, this also apply to taken/ conquered planets).

As for the fourth one, it will be used to define category type (planets with special traits like a homeworld or extremeplanet including an add list button (for a more desirable customization options for micromanagement)  for specific type in more detailed form. 

We need the per planet and the global wheels and they need to be the same as each other.  That being said, they can be improved with almost any random change that anyone can think of. 

I think entering numbers, rather than playing with the mouse would be vastly superior.  There are examples of the idea in photo editing software.  You could type a number into an anchored variable and type numbers or slide a value with a ratioed variable until the desired mix is obtained.  Easy-peesy.

Currently the planetary wheel is a must-have because it's the way we specialize our planets. You can't just remove it without crippling the game. However, the key word here is "currently". The important issue is to be able to specialize your planets and to extract the benefits from that specialization. The tool for this doesn't have to be the planetary wheel. It could be something else, too.

The main point is: If you don't provide an alternative to do the same job, don't remove it.

Which also means that, yes, if you can come up with a better solution for specialization strategies that includes less micro-management, then do it. But only if it really does the same job and if it is better. What I don't want is a replacement that offers a "dumbed down" version making poor optimizations.

A good place to start thinking about a possible replacement would be to list the things how we currently use the planetary wheel and why we are doing them. I'm not a hard-core optimizer and a bit lazy, too, so am not trying to squeeze every last drop out of the system. Basically, I switch between these alternatives for the different planets:

Economy planets are set to

a) "100% eco" : Nothing to build or I don't want it to build anything

b ) "50% eco + 50% man" : I want it to build something but my empire has not yet reached the overflowing cash coffer phase

c) "100% man" : I want it to build something and I have reached the "more cash than I can spend" phase.

Research planets are set to:

a) "100% res" : Not building anything.

b ) "50% res + 50% man" : Building something else than the very first research enhancing improvements.

c) "100% man" : Building research improvements when the planet is not yet putting out very much research.

Manufacturing planets are set to:

"100% man" always

The slider settings are:

Economy and Research planets: Not supporting a yard so doesn't matter.

Manufacturing planets:

a) "100% military" : Not building anything or I want to prioritize ship building

b ) "50% military + 50% social" : Building something

(No need for "100% social" setting because you get that by simply shutting down the yard. "100% social" in manufacturing planets implies that you don't want ships just now. Many times I simply leave the setting "100% military" and alternate between improvements and ships by simply opening and closing the yard which is quicker.)

Looking at the above it's quite clear that you could automate or make easier a lot of what I'm currently doing manually. The desired functionality can be broken down to:

1) There's a planet classification system that divides them into manufacturing planets, research planets, and economy planets. Let's label this as "Focus". (Yes, yes, there's culture, too, but I tend to usually go for the more militaristic victory types in my games... )

2) There are three production options: "Prioritize Focus", "Half/Half", and "Prioritize Manufacturing". If the focus is manufacturing then this option would be rather meaningless but we could also interpret it as the ship building slider and have a nice generic three option system for them all.

3) There are situational triggers that make me always pick the same standard choice for the planetary settings.

4) There are unseen and unexpected cases where I want to pick some other choice than what the "standard" choice would have been by 3).

The above four requirements could be fulfilled, for example, with a straight-forward specialization+governor type solution:

- Add the possibility to set a planetary Focus: Manufacturing, Research, or Economy.

- Add the possibility to set a shipyard to a war footing (or constructor/colony spam or whatever for you need ships...) by setting it to "mobilize".

- Add the possibility to turn on a "planetary governor" that would automatically switch between:

Economy/Research Planets:

a) Focus = "100% specialization" if there's nothing to build.

b ) Focus = "50% specialization + 50% manufacturing" if the improvement to build is a non-Focus improvement OR specialization amount is greater than manufacturing amount.

c) Focus = "100% manufacturing" if the improvement to build is a Focus improvement AND specialization amount is less than manufacturing amount.

Manufacturing Planets:

a) Obviously always keep 100% manufacturing.

b ) If there's nothing to build and supported shipyard is open then route 100% to the shipyard.

c) If the supported shipyard is open and set to "mobilize" then route 100% to the shipyard even if there's something in the build queue.

d) If there's something to build and supported shipyard is open but not set to "mobilize" then route 50% to building the improvement and 50% to the shipyard.

e) If the supported shipyard is closed then route 100% to planetary improvements (like it does now).

- The governor can, of course, be turned off allowing you to handle it manually. This is for those unforeseen cases where you need to do something different. Or just want to do it yourself.

Now, the above is just me, but I'm sure it could be modified to support other ideas or generalized to cover more strategical options in the specializing game. A really nice solution would allow you to configure the governor to have different values for the settings and different parameter values for the triggering situations. Or even configure whole new planetary categories and what their specialization Focus means.

I usually set my production wheel so i finish a building in 1 Turn,

so if i build a basic factory i set it to 30.1 Manufacturing, rest will go to research

and if needed a little bit to wealth.

Later i will put the wheel so that i finish a ship in 1 turn,

rest is the same as above.

We need the per planet management screen and I would prefer it be another prod wheel and slider for UI consistency.  The system has to work for tiny empires, too.  I see individual planet settings as the only way to effectively do that.

I think some of the governors-based ideas are great, but I am not going to choose.  I do have high expectations for Stardock on this subject.  I am not playing immense maps yet because I am waiting for empire management to become a much better experience.  Dev stream said tools are coming in 1.3.  We will see.  I try not to be a complainer on these boards, but this is a subject I am ready to be picky about. 

I want it to stay:  https://youtu.be/JF8BRvqGCNs 

I guess I am as far as palnets go I only have to change the wheel twice. Once to adjust with no spending twice to specialize. It's hard to get above 20. I prefer 48. Wether we are talking adjusting the planet wheel 40 or 96 times a game is. 1500 turns or something like that. Not even once per turn. As far as global that needs to change when you run out of money. Every time you get a lot of money from anolies, and when that runs out. Twice every time. Unless you don't. Spend your starting cash that never runs out.

I'm. On insane abundant

Keep the slider and remove the micro by doing this:

Create "classes" of sliders.

• Players define and manage their own classes of sliders on the Economy screen.
• Planets get assigned to a class instead of each planet having a unique slider.
• Changes to the global class affect all planets assigned to that class.

Example: I would create:

• A "New Colony" class which is set at 100% social manufacturing.
• Research Planet class
• Manufacturing Planet class
• etc.

I can then assign a new planet the New Colony class right away and forget about it. When it's "baked", i can then set it to some other class, say "Research Planet", and go on with life.

If something comes up, like war breaks out, i can globally change the sliders and thus change the output of the entire empire in just a few seconds.

Technnical bonus: this is really easy to implement, because GC3 already does this! Essentially the global slider is a "class", but it's currently the only option. You would just have to make more assignable options. A few small changes to the code and a some UI work and ba-da-bing you're done. You can even keep the option to have planets have a unique slider to keep micromanagers happy.

There's no waste, the production is saved for the next thing in the queue.

As to the wheel... I'd like to see the ability to define such templates, combined with the ability to 'tag' planets into groups. Then I could change the group setting as required, so when I discover a new research building I can just set all research planets to 100% manu for 10 turns and then put them all back to 100% research.

I can see an advantage to have a wheel for types of specialized planets.

I now can.see a problem with loading a pre que with adjancemcie bonuses