I personally love the fact that it feels like I'm building an empire, similar to why I love distant worlds. Distant worlds manages to simulate this - minerals need to be moved and ships need fuel but it is never a burden on the player and works well and efficiently. In aurora there is rudimentary automation but it needs so much effort to set up and the game doesn't do the math for you in order to set the balance correctly - throwing "pickup failed" errors when you make a mistake
(don't bother making the "commercial game" argument I am aware)
The main difference that makes me enjoy aurora more sometimes is the designer. Ships and ground troops. Unfortunately this means that combat is kind of important to give the system meaning, I want to see how well my designs do and it's not always enough to have battleships sat in orbit looking pretty.
The main "tedious" thing that I do enjoy that most wont is designing naval and ground OOBs. I go down to the company level on the ground and have tons of admin commands for each administrative sector in the empire which no other game lets me do. Even then though, I would love more assistance from the game especially on the ground OOB level that helps save large sub-OOBs for use later in the game.
If I want a game with a primary focus on logistics I'm fairly certain a quick search of games will give me options more robust in that regard than aurora. In fact, one such game would be 4X IMO.
I agree that the game could have a few more ways to help you set up your freighters moving stuff around. Even using civilian contracts are a bit limited as you need to constantly watch them too when you really should not need to. You should be able to set up permanent contracts that make sure a certain umber of installation are moved in a certain amount based on production or just a timer.
Same goes for commercial freighters and pick up and delivery.
While I don't build my main units down to company level (as the commanders don't support it well) I still have smaller formations in some forms to use commanders with a lower command value. But battalion level seem the like most easier way to handle ground formations in Aurora with the occasional company formations here and there.
In any way I agree that if you spend all that time building your fleet and ground forces you want to use them, in my opinion there are ample opportunities to do that through a game to satisfy that need, at least for me.
It still does not change the fact that I spend the vast majority of the game watching my empire grow and planning for it the most time consuming. War often are short an brutal in comparison as there usually are little empire planning during military engagements.
In general I probably think that designing and thinking up ship designs (and ground forces) are more exciting than the actual combat that can often turn out to be anti-climactic. Engagements rarely are even so you either loose big or win big anyway.
