Improved Construction Ship Automation

[Thelsk]

For Science Ships, we can pick if we want them to Explore, Survey, Research Anomalies, Research Projects, and Dig Sites. This is really nice. And when they don't find anything to do, they alert us, so we can give them new orders.

Construction Ships also have automation, but it's much more limited. Unlike Science Ships, we cannot pick what we want to automate, and when they don't find anything to do, they're just being silent about it and hang out where they are. This occasionally leaves them stuck, not even moving to new opportunities when they arise.

Also, very early on, you may want to focus on minerals over energy credits, or resources over science.

It would be nice if, when you click automation, you get a popup, just like with science ships, giving you the following options:

- Mining Stations for Energy Credits
- Mining Stations for Minerals
- Other Mining Stations
- Research Stations
- Observation Stations

It would also be nice if, when it finds nothing more to do, it ends the automation and pops a notification, just like for Science Ships. This could then be combined with a shift command to send it back to the Crew Quarters station, instead of it just hanging out in space where it stopped doing stuff.

Finally, when you have multiple Construction Ships set to automation, they seem to often go for the same targets, which then results in a "Construction Ship Failed to..." Notification. It would be nice if Construction Ships were a little smarter about this, trying to focus on sectors that another Construction Ship isn't working on, unless no such sectors exist. This I believe is how it works for Science Ship surveys? Even if that's not technically feasible, or if there are no other sectors, we don't need to receive notifications when an automated Construction Ship cannot build a Station, because another Construction Ship built that Station already.

 

[Beauty Nova]

The one flaw science ship automation has is that it ends when it can't find anything to do. I would absolutely hate for this flaw to be introduced to construction ship automation. The one thing they need is to automatically build observation posts.

 

[Thelsk]

Maybe they only pause if another command is queued? Or they do the next queued command if there's nothing left to do? So you could at least shift queue back to the Crew Quarters, and have them hang out there.

I don't know about you, but I prefer to know when my Science Ships have nothing left to do in their automation stuff, so I know I can give them other stuff to do.

 

[Beauty Nova]

If I'm not just setting and forgetting all my science ships on everything I usually have them all surveying except for one that goes around doing all the anomalies and stuff. So when they run out of anomalies and research projects I have to set them up to do it again. And again. And again. And again.

And then I get annoyed and go back to everything set and forget instead of bothering to only explore with corvettes or have dedicated anomaly handlers because if I have to stop what I'm doing every two minutes to restart the automation it's not very automated at all is it?

Even the set and forget method is annoying because I inevitably have to track down wayward ships halfway across the galaxy when something new happens.

 

[Thelsk]

Let's agree to disagree on that. When they stop, it's because there's nothing left to do. Why leave them on a task that has nothing left to do, just because maybe in the far future, there'll be something to do again.

For example, at the start, I let the Science Ships Explore and Survey. When there's nothing left to Survey, I'll move on to researching Anomalies. Having to manually check if my automated vessels are still doing something all the time would be super annoying.

 

[Beauty Nova]

Why leave them on a task that has nothing left to do, just because maybe in the far future, there'll be something to do again.

Because I want to start them doing that thing, then stop thinking about it forever.

This should be easily solved by adding another checkbox called "Stay on task until canceled" or something. To get back on topic, this could also apply to construction ships.