I've tried the mod, works great! Now that I've seen it in action I see how it can be exploitable. For now I'm enjoying the reduction in micromanagement, and trying to minimize double-dipping. If Stardock ends up creating a UI element that does it without exploit, I will start using it.
How much micro did it save? I specialize my planets, some planets are full manufacturing and those planets support shipyards, with the production wheel set to 100% manufacturing. I keep my social-military slider set to 50-50 or 34-66 depending upon how aggressive I want to be with ship-making. When the planet has no tiles to improve, I'm left with two options: change the slider to 100% military, or build a project. The former takes a click, a click-drag, and another click for every single such planet. When I want to build an improvement again, I need to repeat the process. The Shipyard Backing project eliminates all that micro, which is a big time-saver when you have multiple dozens of planets.
Going the project route also gets rid of that micro, but the wisdom of using them is questionable. The research and wealth projects are useless on manufacturing-specialized planets, as they provide a percent increase, not a flat increase. The Culture project may be good if I'm in a culture war, which I'm usually not. The Birthing subsidies is the best vanilla project, but only until you reach max population. Adding more room for population is not just about doing more terraforming to add farms. It must also be juggled with approval management, and there are simply phases of the game where I must focus production on other things.
Yes, I realize this level of micro is self-inflicted and not necessary to win against the current AI. But that is how I enjoy the game so there is no harm in asking for capabilities that make the effort easier. Thank you for providing that TurielD!
