i just thought of a good idea to share to you all. what if as the player developed some sort of automatic whatever-doer (like building certain special almost required buildings) there were higher and higher levels of automation for it?
my examples will use things that need repairing
at the 1st level, you have to monitor the stats all by yourself and repair things as they get low
at the 2nd, something will start to get lit up when it needs to be repaired
3rd, you receive a notification on your GUI that "it" needs to be repaired
4th, you can repair "it" from that notification window
5th, you can set each "it" (building, organelle, whatever) to repair at a certain threshold
6th, you can set a threshold for everything to repair at
7th, you are completely uninvolved in repairing things, and now repairing is something you never hear of anymore until you create some sort of upper tech object or research that would normally require repairing, w/e
the thing is, this could apply to ANYTHING (at least in my idea). If you have the resources, you could eventually be completely uninvolved in your empire's development while it still develops by itself.