I couldn't repeat the thing with the starbase. But I have seen some other things:
- The AI build tons of useless stuff. Half a dozen health buildings, where 2 nutrition facilitys would do (I never build health, extra food does fine)
to explain this better: the nutrition facilitys are build on the small planets. If the AI would have build them on the big planets, there would have been the same costs, but more food. Also, the habitation was build on the small planets. If you build up the big planets with all adds (food, production and commerce), you have more goodies with less cost. As a Human, I also try to specialise a bit (only a bit - you can't neglect food or production). There are systems with more commerce, so they get more money-, sience- and espionage buildings than the other systems. And there are the systems with more production that can build the extras - advocats and ships. If you try to egalize them, you don't get anything. Be it influence, a university or a manufacturing plant - it has to pay off in a reasonable amount of time.
- Sometimes you choose what to build and it forces you to select it a second time by opening again.
- Planetary defense doesn't need good officers (+50% xp). If you make your attack right, there is need for more upgrades. And if you don't want to get the planet, you shouldn't attack. Its even more simple than in vanilla, since your really important units are highly mobile (missiles and squadrons) and they don't give you xp even if you survive them. If the attacker is bad or the war is already lost, it might be that you survive them - but you have to survive until the next upgrade, and thats not that likely. Better, use that level you CAN get from the start for something useful.
- I haven't seen the AI use their missiles. Bad habit.
- I haven't seen the AI use squadrons, I haven't even seen any squadrons at all- and they are the best weapon you can use! (re-useable missiles!)
- The Ai is to scattered. I would like to see the costs for that, but I think it would be disastrous. Also, building a starbase wherever you find a nice ressource might be good to get wars started with humans, but you don't get to use them if you can't build a warplane. And I have never seen a good traderoute to a human (don't know if the comps can trade), so trade to comps is useless. If you play versus humans, the lanes can be interupted very easiliy. So traderoutes (and the advantage for the red syndicate) are a useless feature. Get rid of trades or make them usefull.
- Not knowing what the system has as planets is frustrating. You colonize the system only to find out that the system is almost useless.
- Scouts have to have more movement.
- Its almost useless for the pirate to attack with planetary defense. And its annoying to play with raging babarians if they only destroy you your lanes (and I suspect its the same without raging). Better let the planetary defense patrol for construction ships or colonists or something else, or let the pirates use tactics - like gather a few ships before attacking a defendet system. Make them more interesting instead of a subtle annoyance.
- Don't let the AI attack with planetare defense. Planetary defense is only useful for defending systems. And there are only a few ways to skill a planetary defense. My way is to skill them for city defense and then strength to the end. Maybe light ships versus the invasion ships, but thats only important in the beginning since squadrons do all the important fighting in the end.
- There is no ship for patroling. Invasion ships, planetary defense ships and scouts are useless (and to specialised), and destroyers are to expensive. OK, if I HAVE to use one of them I could use a planetary defense or an invasion - but they are higly specialised and it hurts to misuse them. Potentially you could redesign the scout with a bit more strength, maybe 2/3 to 3/4 of planetary defenses with 50 or 60% versus light ships (of course they would have to be cheaper than planetary defense and capable of attacking), with some new upgrade choices:
* Seeing stealth ships isn't build in for both stealth ships and scouts. You have to buy it, but you can buy it from the start without any prereqisits.
* +1 visibility isn't build in, but you can upgrade that without prerequisites. The same with the first +1 movement.
* Maybe you could combine stealthships and scouts, so hidden nationality as well as stealth capabilitys are (two different) upgrades without prerequisites.
The other possibility is to make destroyers cheaper - building a ship capable of fighting is a real expenditure, and therefore there is not much flying around and that reduces the fun.
- If a ship (here: destroyer) intercepts a squadron, he should also take damage. And he should be capable of intercepting several times a turn, not only once a turn. And other ships should be able to intercept squadrons as well - lets say 10% for alle ships. Together with ships intercepting taking damage this should be fun...
Maybe you have to adjust the strentgh of carriers a bit, and, I don't know if already implementet, fighters have to intercept before anything else. Of course, fighters have only 90 or 95% interception...
Now, it is more of a static fight, and with missiles so common and sqadrons so mighty (and none of them used from th AI) you can determine the outcome really good.
