Another funny thing the AI did in my second game:

I was attacking an enemy system with about 15 frigates, when the AI showed up with a fleet of equal size. Apparently, he had some additional tech levels, as he began to whipe the floor with my ships. Being deep inside the grav well, I decided to let my fleet (9 FFs left) go down fighten, dealing as much damage as they can and build another fleet in the neighbouring system, when all of a sudden, the clearly winning AI fleet (still 12 or 13 FFs and all in good shape, while a few of my own FFs were only held together by string and tape) started to withdraw from the fight. While running I managed to kill a few of his ships and am now in possession of a nice new planet.