Progress update 2021-02-28:
Sorry about the long delay. It will probably be awhile before my next post after this one as well. I took a bit of a break, but I've been back to working on the game for the past 40 days or so now. The main reason for not posting is I'm in a very experimental mode with the game. I've been hard at work on scriptable AI for player races and have a solid framework in place. I borrow heavily from NPR logic, and have filled in many of the gaps where the NPR's just cheat. I just reached the point where I need to start writing some AI for ship towing (which NPR's dont need).
However, scriptable AI is now on the backburner. It's making the development process slow and tedious, and it winds up being slow because a lot of optimization strategies aren't possible. There's one more big problem: One motivation for 100% Automation is the possibilities it opens up for multiplayer, wherein a player could theoretically log off for the night and their empire would be auto-managed for them until they returned. But quasar's current user-editable AI scripts update the database directly, and could easily be changed by a player to cheat or even wipe the DB, so it's completely useless for any multiplayer experiments. I would need to rework them so that only "legal" updates are possible.
Thus, I've realized I need to switch gears. Rather than continue with the 100% automation project, I'm going to start adding new Default Orders, Conditional Orders, and possibly improving Order Templates as well. Once these improved fleet management tools are in place, I'll update the Automation scripts to use these tools rather than micromanage everything on their own.
This will be a significant deviation from any flavor of Aurora, probably the first of many. To keep Aurora faithfulness alive, I've added a Classic Mode checkbox to the existing Quasar settings window. In Classic Mode, Quasar will look like it does today -- very close to VB6, with the addition of cherry picked C# features such as Prototypes. In Modern Mode (box unchecked), all my new buttons, UI windows, default orders, etc will be visible. The checkbox shows and hides these new UI elements in real time. This gives me a lot of freedom to experiment and add new features in my quest to reduce micromanagement and improve QoL.
Again, I'm still in a very experimental stage, and will be for a long while. This has been a snapshot of where I am right now, things could always change.