Essentially this creates an auto battler system where you are picking the board. While it could get a bit screwy when you are you opponent pick different total areas with some overlap, the auto battler is a solid gameplay style that is also fairly popular at the moment. I would argue that auto battlers are designed to average not reduce player agency, so for some players they increase their skill, for others they reduce it.
For example, if you had to control each unit in a game of an auto battler, my friend who played starcraft at a master/grandmaster level would wipe the floor with me. By removing the micro player agency, and emphasizing the other aspects of play, I have a much better chance of winning.
It's more of a game scope matter. Do I want player to keep attention to macro or micro, economy or war, diplomacy or internal affair... how often, how much and so on.
RTS games traditionally have a strong micro component. Grand Strategy tend to abstract that away an let player focus on the bigger picture. Stellaris is an hybrid of the 2 genders and (imho) didn't find the right balance between these two souls.
Stuff like ship designer is clearly RTS. Create optimized design for specific tasks, put right weapon in right slot, make a fleet with x% class A and y% class B.
Battle mechanics are clearly grand strategy. Send fleet to system, battle and read recap (optionally: click retreat button... if you make in time).
There are two main things to consider when building that:
-How much player attention is requires: does player have enough time left to handle other things, or has to constantly "babysit" (micro) the mechanic?
-It is interesting (fun): there is agency in the process, does the process present viable alternatives, can player influence the end result.
Imho currently only the first requirement is met.
Fleet combat is already an auto battler. You have 0 agency on that. During a war you can just issue commands from galaxy view and wait for battle report while you work on something else (most likely pops an jobs
).
Ship designer is instead very micro but is an asynchronous time sink. You don't constantly design ships during wars. You just occasionally update classes and that is. It's mostly there to give you something to do during quiet times.
What it fails is giving effective agency by presenting viable alternatives that can influence the end result. Unless you play for losing we all know by now you have to single stack all you fleets, prefer battleships over other classes and use whatever weapon load that patch is more effective. Auto follow the slowest fleet, move that fleet. Whoever has the biggest stack wins. Some "geography" configuration may delay the first/final showdown, especially in MP, in that case there will be a little bit of (arguably annoying) cat and mouse micro. But eventually it will come and the war is set.
Personally I wouldn't like micro intensive solutions. For that end Auto resolvers may look like a good solution. But actually they are not necessarily so. Because with auto resolvers a battle outcome is decided before battle starts. And if we pair that with a doomstack gameplay as it is now war itself is decided before it starts. And more or less that's what all people complain about.
That's why I still stick to my idea that maintenance cost per month is the right lever to use when paired with easier (cheaper, faster) ship production/replacement. It offers an interesting trade off between amassing the biggest stack you can to dominate an enemy in a battle and spreading your forces while keeping most of them anchored at home ports to not run out of supplies before war ends. It makes undesiderable for large empires to commit all they have against small targets allowing for more interesting wars, it naturally advantages defenders without boring and hard to balance static defenses (not to mention they are a big culprit of the hyperlane only rework). It also suggests to players a natural conclusion for the war (when their economies are getting impacted beyond repair or the next enemy prize it's just not worth the cost).
Plus it can be adjusted with all kind of modifiers (fleets in system, fleets in nearby systems, fleets engaged in combat/bombardment, enemy fleets in nearby systems, jumps away from border, buildings/space structures in range, traditions, policies, techs, etc.) that offer a number of alternative choices to the player and ways for developers to balance them. With right modifiers it should be possible to win wars even after losing some initial battles if that means that you were able to make the enemy consume to much supplies.
