Wouldn't the order tiles have to be specific rather than generic?
Such as "move to system X" and "Attack ship Y"?
As for the expansion rate, I was going full out on it, although I was admittedly hampered by a run of bad luck in the cargo bay department
I did manage to smash the opposing transport before it could finish the colony, and built 3 transport hulls to drag coins to the colony to help build it up faster.
Our warships simply did the monkey smash faster than the transports built colonies
I'm not sure how long the turns actually took, since it felt like only a minute, but when we looked up, it was 1 AM.