MS Project levelling - how to stop longest task scheduled first

[jasond77]

Hi All, new member to the forum, so thanks in advance for reading my query

I have noticed if you change a batch of tasks to update the resource, then level those tasks, MSP schedules the longest task first.

I list my tasks in chronological order so I'd like levelling to consider this when assigning tasks to the same resources

Once I level some tasks I'd also like that to be 'locked down' and if I assign tasks to someone further down the plan I'd like levelling to ignore the batch above (I understand I can use dependencies for this, but that's a hack)