What I mean by more rally point automation is:
- The ability for rally points to tell shipyards to produce particular types and fleet them in certain proportions. It'll add up the time that a ship will be in production and the time it'll take to reach the rally point and join the fleet, and use this information to build the fleet you've specified in as short a time as possible. There are two options that immediately come to mind here (escorted transport fleets and space superiority fleets) but the player and I suppose the AI should be able to design their own fleets for a specific purpose in much the same way as we currently design ships, except that logistics will determine how much you can squeeze in. There should be an option here (defaulting to on) to include updated ship designs in the fleet template.
- The ability to specify which modules you want on a starbase at a given rally point, and have the rally point bring just enough contructors from the linked shipyards. Like above, you would want to be able to design the starbase in advance and then have the rally point automation follow that plan. When the linked shipyards have produced enough constructors, they unlink from that project automatically and they each punch up a new icon on GNN/notification list so that you can assign them new work.
- The ability to set the governor options on and off and the initial build list for a new colony when arriving at a colony rally point.
- The ability to invade with a certain invasion tactic without seeing the ground combat screen as a variation on Auto-Attack.
- The options that you've customised above show up when you're creating or modifying the rally point, in addition to the current Normal, Fleet and Auto Attack options. I think that it's also been suggested that rally points should be able to forward ships to other rally points (for patrol routes).
The aim of all this is give the player some macro control that they can turn on and off as they see fit, speeding up turns and turn processing.
