[Puke]

for building new colonies, the 'fill queue' feature is great. i only learned about it a couple months ago, but its really nice to be able to pre-define build queues.

waypoints are invaluable. I never fussed with them untill about a year ago, and they save huge amounts of time. used with the automatic move order when spaceyards complete a ship, this is the biggest time saver there is.

the transport minister is useless, but i did just read that the new patch makes it better. it probably still does not know how to handle population of different atmosphere types. for moving population, you have to do it all by hand. sometimes it helps to have a bit of each kind on a huge transport, so you can sort out bits as the transport visits various planets.

for organizing troops, you have to load them by hand. if you are having many planets built troops, i usually have some generic transports with repeating orders moving between them, and dumping all their troops at a central location. then you can have your troop trnasports stopping by that spot (waypoint!) on their way to the front (another waypoint!).

the great thing is, that when the front moves, you can just move the waypoint without giving all your ships and spaceyards new orders.

i sometimes use the colonization minister (but never the transport minister) when I am to the point in the game that I dont care that much about wasting some space or some time, as long as I dont have to click on the buttons.