Tricks to reducing micromanagement in SE4

[Fian]

Anyone have some tips for a newbie player? I never have used the govenors/administrators (or whatever they are called in this game (: ) to let the computer handle some of the redundant tasks for me. For me personally, the two most time-consuming tasks that I do is ferry troops from inside my territory out to where the action is, plus also ferry oxygen breathing aliens to oxygen worlds and move the methane breathing aliens to some other habitable world. Are there any suggestions on how to make these tasks easier?

[PvK]

The ministers aren't very good at those tasks, IMO.

However, the Waypoints feature and the Repeat Orders feature can save a lot of micromanagement. You can also set shipyards to automatically send newly built ships to a particular waypoint.

PvK

[gravey101]

You know, you'd think after the amount of time I've been playing this game I'd have known about the option to set queues to send ships automatically to a waypoint...
Thanks!

[primitive]

The ministers are a useless bunch, so you ought to do your own managment.

Waypoints are great, put one on every planet with fleet/ship Training, Stagingareas and important Rrefuelingstations. "Ctrl+1" sends the selected fleet/ship to Waypont 1.

Use the Hotkeys and the different Windows to reduce the actual click-work.

This is my personal way to repopulate my planets with alien population, there may be easier ways:
- Go to the Colony Window (F5)
- select "General" and sort by athmosphere
- select "Races"
This gives a great overview of your population and make planning the transfer easy.
I usually keep it sorted like this until most of my planets have the right population.

Then to move the population:
- Select the transport ship
- Hit T (transfer cargo)
- Transfer population (mouse)
- Close Window (Esc or enter)
- Reselect ship
- Hit M (Move)
- Hit F5 (Colony window)
- Select the right planet from the list (mouse)

Hope some of this is usefull

[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.

[Fyron]

Use Repeat Orders for everything you can.

Use shift-click to select and order several non-fleeted ships (or fleets) at once.