I don't know, I think the computer has it out for me. 70% of my starting arrangements have left me with access to 10 planets or less to race for and in 3 situations, I had to start with 3 whole planets until MUCH later in game. I think the game hates me ;)
(1) Auto-explore (2) Routes to patrol, maybe via waypoints, so we can defend trade routes (3) Wasted resources. Maybe you can put the wasted enerygy into credits if it is too hard to roll to something else? Or, maybe the extra resources could be rolled into another area of production (military, social, research) based on what is set as your highest percentage and moving downwards. (4) A way to set a predetermined amount for colony/transport ships so that you can use
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