Import/Export Ship Missions

[Celarious]

It is not like this would allow anything more than to execute large scale surveying missions. The player will still need to make the colonies and everything else.

You appear to have forgotten that harvesting orders exist, colonies won't ever be needed

That is true, I never think about those because they are not reliable in the long-term.

I guess in theory you could download blueprints for some huge harvester exploration ships, building the needed industry to manufacture them, and then colonize a ringworld to get enough officers to man them. Then you could use this feature to export your starmap, run it through a program to generate some missions for the ships to execute, and then repeat that until you have found the resources. Once perfect/desired resources are found you could make the program generate the harvesting orders for the ships, or instruct the player on how to colonize the solar system.

Still doesn't sound horrible, the player still needs to play the game and actually build up. But as I said, it singleplayer now, so it doesn't really matter.

Nah, more likely is there'll be some "perfectly minmaxed optimal" harvester design created, and you'll only need one, set that up and click "go", leave it open for a week, and the game plays itself, path of least resistance, metagaming is inevitable if the option exists
The only infrastructure they'd need is their starting planet and moon, and then that's it, no ringworlds or further colonization needed

Really, you don't even need cargo ships at all, simply tow a harvester station over the planets you want and it can send shipments back
A friend did this when they played Starship last year and they claim it worked perfectly, no colonies needed

Sure, it might be fine in SP, except new people will just immediately look up an "optimal gameplay" guide, do it, and then think that the game is too easy, shallow and non-interactive, and then complain here on the forums or on Steam reviews
Also, what if we ever get MP play? That's even more problematic

The core problem is the fact that people WILL optimize the fun out of a game if possible, and then complain about the fact that they've done so. The only solution is to not let them