I feel there's some issues with the auto resolve -- I am getting very good results that I don't know how I would achieve otherwise.
This is early combat, but I loaded monitor ships with rattler missile bay and 3 utility magazines. auto resolve has destroyed early alien vessels at the cost of 6 missiles total -- each ship is 96x4 missiles, but auto resolve expended 6 total missiles to destroy the vessel with no damage to the ships.
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I've really enjoyed the many hours I've spent so far into the game and look forward to future development.