I just go and fill up the build queues on the turn I colonize. The planet is then OK on its own for a few years until it finishes, at which time, repeat build of units is started.
Fleets of ships helps to reduce clicking, but I usually don't give multi-turn orders, since I want to be able to react quickly to enemy movement. "Repair at nearest" is a wonderful order, you can then ignore the ship until it gets to the pile at home.
A series of orders is possible, just clickclickclick and smack the repeat orders button if you want.
quote:
i really hated how in Stars! that you had to do stuff every turn
How so? I always had huge chains of queues and orders built up, so only new ships needed to be worked on.
Patrol orders while in a minefield would cut down most ships passing through automatically.
When you say *click* are those 'end turn' clicks?
In Stars, you could easily get caught flipping through those 100-200 news Messages. Se4 tends to have 10 Messages per turn, but tiny empires can average as low as 1, and special events like tech trade can really flood the log (new tech level! new tech area! another new tech level! etc.)
Overall I'd say SE4 has lots of events like Stars!, with less clutter. That's probably because you get to watch as everything happens, so there is less that has to be logged.
I haven't played MOO much, (technically two games, really about 1/4 of a game) so I can't really comment on how it relates.
The detail is the best feature. Try the demo if you're not sure.
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Looks like my rambling may have drifted off topic for a bit there, oh well.