The fleet auto queuing could use some improvement

+1

I believe there are 2 issues:

1.)

Reinforcements are always queued to the "closest planet with a factory"

Having similar issues mostly with advent, as I usually build a factory on frontline planets as they double as repair stations, though I usually have another planet further away with multiple dedicated factories.

This sometimes causes all reinforcements to be queued from a planet with 1 factory which is marginally closer, even if I have a planet 2 jumps away with relativistic factory artifact (ship build speed) and 4 factories.

2.)

The ship building is not split between systems properly,

e.g. if you have 2 systems close by with 1 factory each and you queue 10 ships, it queues 10 of them in the "closest" system, instead of splitting them 5 to first and 5 to second.

Workarounds:

you can set a rally point from your factory worlds, to your fleet, bookmark/hotkey them and build ships manually, (a-la sins 1)

this does not track them as queued in fleet tracker, but adds them properly.

Suggestions

1 Have the ability/button to "opt out" a planet from fleet reinforcement (I don't want my 1 factory planets to be considered for auto building) 

pros: gives back control to the player to some extent

cons: this would cost a UI button (advanced planet actions?) and would require you to click it every time you build a factory

does not resolve issue 2 (does not split workload across planets)

2 Have the ability to override "Best Factory" to a specific planet

pros: gives back control to the player to some extent

cons: again, does not solve issue 2, where you might want to split the load between 2 planets (e.g. frigate factories on one planet and cruiser factories on another one)

3 Have the ability to associate multiple planets as "Best factories" for fleet (similar to rally point) and split the load between them

pros: gives back control to the player to some extent

cons: likely more difficult to implement (how do you split 10 frigates across 2 planets with different distances and number of factories?) and quite difficult to understand from UX

4 "intelligently" calculate how to split load between factory planets taking into account

- relative distance of planets

- ship movement speed (you can queue faster frigates farther)

- ship build speed (including artifacts)

- ship build cost reduction (tec) 

- "unsafe" systems in between (enemy fleets)

pros: would be awesome

cons: getting it wrong would get you back to square 1,  additionally assuming this would be extremely expensive

Addendum:

sorry, kinda overdid it

I can totally relate to this when my reinforcements were all queued from a factory that was waiting to be constructed in the current gravity well instead of starting to build on another factory that was 1 or 2 jumps away. The optimal thing would have to start building far away then optimize the queue on the way once closer factories were available.

The game should just evaluate the time to deliver (factory build time + factory availability time if already busy + ship build time + ship travel time) based on safest travel routes and it does not seem to be the case.

Is there a way to designate a start point for a fleet and have it optimally build it up? The only way I have found to make a fleet is to manually build the first ship and add it to the fleet to establish where the fleet is, and only then does auto queue do its best. Otherwise things all seem to build at my homeworld.