Hi, Generally I am pretty pleased with the AI in the game (I have DA and TA installed), but one problem that seems to keep popping up with the AI is that it seems to use ships that I give them rather poorly. I often go big on research and try to remain at peace because my empire is scattered everywhere (planets, resources, other starbases etc). The military ships I do build are way often more powerful than everyone elses such that each one could take on their entire fleets. One way to keep the galaxy reasonably balanced is to give powerful military ships to those races that are getting beaten upon. I don't often give my best ship models but ones that have enough defences that dying race's present enemies could hardly hope to damage.

So I give a really nice ship to the dying race and what do they do with it? They don't wipe out all those transports right next to it or destroy the entire oposing fleet in the way it could. Instead they fly it to one of their own planets (usually the capital) and park it there!! Meanwhile their other planets are getting taken over. They could seriously have wiped out the entire opposing attack force in a few turns but instead they fly it home, put it on display, let kids play in it, who knows!? So I give them another nice ship hoping that maybe with their capital safe, they will us the next one to wreak some havock. No! instead they fly it to the capital as well!!! One of these ships could almost defend their entire empire, but they park it where they put the other ship. They could have at least  put it on some other planet that is likely to be attacked.

This has happened in quite a number of different games. From what I remember, the ship I give almost never leaves the planet it is first sent to. I suspect that the issue is not something easily resolvable and has to do with how the AI decides how it will use ships generally. Perhaps the thinking that went into the AI was that a race's most powerful ship is probably not much more powerful than its next most powerful ship, or that there are more of these powerful ships in production, so its okay to this one on defense until the others are built. Then again, I have seen other races use their precursor ranger offensively. Is the AI instructed to treat those sorts of ships differently than the one's it produces itself. If so then maybe it could treat the kick ass ships that I give them similarly to the way they treat precursor rangers.

Anyhow, if this could be addressed it would be nice, but it certainly is not a priority.