I would like to request that the construction ship build queue be switched from the current "up front payment" method to the "pay when you can, when the job starts" method used for fleet upgrades. This would vastly reduce the need for micro for both of the two main uses for construction ships.
The way I envision it, the construction ship would fly to the place specified at the top of its build queue, then check to see if there were enough minerals in the empire's pool to build the thing. If there were, it would start right away, and if there was not enough, the construction ship would wait at that location until there was, and then start the build. Ideally, the construction ship's build queue would have arrows like the planet and starbase build queues have now, so the build order could be tweaked by the player if desired, without needing to clear the entire queue and reorder everything, as is currently the case.
- Expanding your empire to new systems. The game incentivizes expanding your empire contiguously by increasing the cost to build starbases the further they are away from your borders. In itself, this is a good thing. However, as the current construction ship system requires costs to be paid when adding the build order to the queue, it also incentivizes microing your expansion orders, as the cost can be dramatically lowered by waiting for one starbase to finish so the border expands before ordering the next in line to be built. If, as I propose, resources were only paid to construction ships at the time the job began, a player could instead queue up several starbases at once and get the lowest costs (so long as each one was next to one of the ones earlier in the queue), removing much of the micro involved in going checking back frequently to see if it was time to order the next starbase to be built. Quite a few times, I've lost races for land-grabs against the AI, because I got distracted by something else going on and forgot to order the construction ship to start the next starbase in time.
- Building Mining and Science outposts. This is more of an early game thing, when a player's resources are tight and getting an extra month or two of income could be important. In systems that have a large number of potential mines or research deposits, it is much easier to order them all to be built from the context menu on the galaxy view. However, if you do not have enough minerals, you either need to wait, or go into the system's map and order each mine to be built individually. The latter is far better from an income perspective, as it means you can at least get some of the value in the meantime, at the cost of a bunch of tedious micro. However, if construction ships worked like the upgrade fleet button does, then a player could press the button on the galaxy map, and the construction ship would start on the structures that they could afford immediately, and the player wouldn't need to remember to come back to build the others.
The way I envision it, the construction ship would fly to the place specified at the top of its build queue, then check to see if there were enough minerals in the empire's pool to build the thing. If there were, it would start right away, and if there was not enough, the construction ship would wait at that location until there was, and then start the build. Ideally, the construction ship's build queue would have arrows like the planet and starbase build queues have now, so the build order could be tweaked by the player if desired, without needing to clear the entire queue and reorder everything, as is currently the case.
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