I absolutely hate moments like now, where I want to build something in 45 minutes because I will take a planet or because production will happen. I convince myself to stay awake doing things in order to get to that time.
Delayed build orders. You can set it to build Econ, Industry or Science in X hours. Probably after/before production. Obviously this should also include the “build all cheapest” option.
I would like that so much. One of the best request I have seen.
I’ll have a think about how it could be done. Do you think it could be a carrier order. Go to this star, wait x hours, build x industry, move to the next star, ect ect?
Not quite directly related, but I’m sure it’s been asked before and I haven’t seen the answer.
What is the reason that money production happens every 24 hours unlike industry and science?
Continuous money production doesn’t prevent the need for a delayed build order, but it would make it somewhat less urgent. (Missing your production time for a number of hours could mean many hours of lost industry or science).
I actually really like that, making it a carrier order would solve a lot of problems.
This also brings up another issue that I think could improve the game, which is a sort of “practice build”. Similar to when you direct your ships to go somewhere without saving it. Mainly this would help me with warp gates, as I am often unsure how long it will take to reach somewhere that is normally 17 hours (5 or 6 hours?)
You could “practice build” some things, see how it would make your ships move, and then save changes or not as you wished.
I think it should be per star and like bulk infrastructure upgrade.
Per star:
Click on a star
Click on delayed order button
Choose or type the number of hours
Choose the number of industry, science and/or economy.
Bulk infrastructure upgrade:
Identical, except for an option to delay the order for an amount of hours. Could be 0 hours by default.
There should be a history of delayed build orders on message screen.
I see how that would work, but the advantage of having it as a carrier order is when I order my carrier to go get a 42-value star in 5h in turn based I can build there right away instead of waiting for next turn.
Or in real time I can walk away and not count down until that time.
I agree.
A combination of both options would be even better, but more work for the team 
Its a small team too!
I was trying to figure out a way to have this on a star by star basis, but I couldn’t think of a nice way to display all the future orders that wasn’t horribly cluttered, and I don’t relish the idea of losing track of where my money is being spent. I came up with this for bulk infrastructure. No carriers, hmmm… I don’t often want to build carriers on a delay except in turn based games.
With the list of delayed orders expanding as you put in more, and the orders able to be canceled or modified before they execute.
It does raise the question: if you order it to buy 1000 worth of something and you only have 500, do you ignore the rest of the order or continue trying to buy on the next tick? Late game I get a lot of credits from taking econ from stars and the latter would be interesting, but my off the cuff estimate is that that system would be harder to code in than a ‘simple’ version where if you overestimate how much cash you’ll have on hand at the time, you just won’t build as much as expected.
(I like mockups)
I like mockups too. They are very helpful.
This would not be too crazy.
Yes please. I currently have a 2x speed game with a production at 3:30am. I miss half the cycle before I even wake up! If I could tell the game to spend x or y amount at that point, that would pretty much be the best thing ever.