If I just have every project run the files are a mess with dribs and drabs being done.
This was discussed back in January, and I was able to get to the "meat" of the issue as described in the thread Any Way to Determine if Tonight's Schedule has Gaps? As you have found, for astro-imaging, it does indeed do "dribs and drabs" because it tries to work in the best conditions (lowest air mass). I added a Plan Completion feature and produced an experimental Scheduler for Rowland Archer and Peter Prendergast and specifically in this post within that thread and the actual drop-in replacement Scheduler.exe with the Project Completion option in this post from that thread (it is an attachment). The idea (short story) is that it will focus on completing Projects at the expense of working farther away from the meridian (and thus through worse air) as a trade off for getting projects done. You might want to try it and they "load the scheduler up" as it was designed. If you do please chime in on that thread so I can keep track of you. We're discussing this now in a MaxIm guiding thread.

SCHEDULER-1575 - Priority Boost Based on Project Completion