Progress update 2021-08-21:
Lots of fixes and bits of QoL have been added, listed in the Patch Updates thread. I haven't left Sol yet in my campaign, although I did peek in on a system where an exploring NPR discovered a Star Swarm hive and engaged in a small skirmish. This caused the well known phenomenon of clicking '5 days' repeatedly only to see seconds or minutes pass by each time with no perceivable events because the skirmish was in a system my race had yet to discover.
Were I to use auto-turns this wouldn't be a huge deal because I could just go get a cup of coffee while waiting for the next player interrupt.
(And that is how auto-turns still works after the feature I'm about to describe was added). But I was advancing 5 days, making a couple changes, advancing another 5 days, making a couple more changes, and so on.
So I added an "Auto-repeat of turns shortened by NPR interrupts" feature which gets around this problem by automatically repeating turns until the requested increment length is reached. When an increment is shortened and an auto-repeat occurs, a Turn Progress window will appear, which includes an 'Interrupt' button allowing you to interrupt the auto-repeating turns early. You might notice in the animation the "last time increment" events are combined into a single event, to make it easier to see the total amount of time that elapsed when all is said and done, rather than a flood of lots of little time increments with no activity in between.
Note this feature only takes effect when the event that shortened the increment time took place in a system with no player presence. Any shortening that occurs in a system with a player will still stop the turn, in order to let the player react. Also note this only happens with auto-turns unchecked. There is a new checkbox in the settings window that lets you disable this feature.
For now, the Turn Progress only appears when an "Auto-repeat of turns shortened by NPR interrupts" occurs. In the future I can certainly enable it for *all* lengthy turns in the future, although I will prefer to do an optimization pass first if turns get that long.
Automation of fuel harvester basesAwhile ago I added the new default order 'Load fuel at harvester' so it could be combined with the 'Fuel tanks full' condition and subsequent 'Unload 90% Fuel at Nearest Colony' order. (Or the new 'Unload 90% Fuel at Capital' order). The 'Load fuel at harvester' default order will assign a 'Refuel from target fleet' order targeting the nearest harvester with fuel tanks 25% full or more. If the tanker doesn't fill up, it idles until another 25% batch is available, then loads that as well, repeating until tanks are full and it can head home.
However 'Refuel from target fleet' traditionally fails and interrupts the turn if the fleet cannot be fully refueled, which is sometimes desirable, but not when you're trying to set up something automated. So I added an "Any Amount" checkbox on the Fleet Orders window that (only) appears for Refuel from Target Fleet and Resupply from Target Fleet. When checked, the order you add will read slightly differently: "Refuel any amount from target fleet." The move will be considered complete (rather than failing) regardless of whether enough fuel/supplies were available to completely refill. The order assigned by the Default Order "Load fuel at harvester" will now be for Any Amount, so it's possible to fully automate retrieval of fuel from harvesters without intervention. I may find similar uses for this checkbox with other order types in the future.
