how to automate multiple ships at once?

[Serben]

i have a ton of construction ships. some of them have had their automation turned off because i diverted them to repair some abandoned ships. it's too much of a pain to go through the entire list one by one and re-enable their automation. is there some way to automate all of them with one just a click or two instead of having to do it one by one?

[Serben]

or better yet, is there some setting that turns automation back on for idle ships if the player hasn't given them any new orders after a while?

[Galaxy227]

Nope and nope, assuming all of your empire policies are set to strictly manual.

Dip your toes into the policy screen and set your construction ships to automated. That should have the AI take control of them all, if I remember correctly. I play strictly manual, however, rarely fiddling with automation—so take my word with a grain of salt.

[Serben]

there is no policy to automate construction ships. and they were already automatic. i just diverted some of them to repair some abandoned ships. now i have 50+ construction ships that are just sitting idle. the only way i can see to re-automate them is to go to EACH ONE and manually re-enable automation one by one. This will take tons of clicking and time and is a MAJOR pain and i don't want to have to deal with it. please tell me there is some way to re-enable it for all of them with just a few clicks?

[Galaxy227]

Unfortunate.

Not sure if you already know this, but another "quick" way is by pressing the A key shortcut. It turns automation on for the selected ship so you don't have to click down on the little blue arrow. Obviously you still end up having to select each individual ship though.

[Hyperion1]

If you go in your fleet menu at the top right you can organize constructions ships by idle or not idle.

Normally you have an option for make the automation back and I think it can work with a multiple select in this menu.