Dear devs,

I am having great enjoyment with the game. The AI is good enough to give a challenge, but there some dumb AI decisions which could be looked into.

1) path finding. More often than not, big fleets have traffic jams. It is annoying that the ships bump into each other and stop dead in their tracks.

2) The AI fails to do a proper assessment of my defensive power. A defensive starbase on a neutral node can be tough, but it is by no means indestructible. On a planet well it has some support which makes it even tougher, but with proper strategy it is also destroyable. I have seen several times the AI send a too small fleet single-mindedly trying to kill my (bypassable) starbase.

3) Which leads to the other problem. AI gets obsessed in following a single path to my territory. I was playing a map where tehre were 3 ways to reach my occupied planets, yet the AI always followed the same path. the pirates, though, switched the target planets on every attack (when my defense is strong enough, I usually igonre the bounty, as the pirates do nary a dent in late game). This allowed me to leisurely set up one starbase on each planet, and on the 'safe' neutral nodes, inside my territory. IMO, it should look for alternative paths into my territory, and also try to bypass starbases on neutral well if it wants to hit one of my planets.

5)Stay out of range. I usually try to stay out of range of a star base and beat it to a pulp with bombers, unless I have a massive force which can take it down before it pops my capital ships. When I get close I usually trigger the capital ship level-6 skills (missile barrage!) to mash it up as fast as possible. The AI just gets up close and personal, and is most of the time smashed by the basestar, esp. if it is maxed out.

4) One strategy I use, and I believe others do too, is to use starbases on neutral nodes to (besides the defensive boost) spruce up the economy with trade ports. I have never seen the AI do a similar thing. My personal favorites starbase-on-star-gravity-well strategy is putting up 4 starbases on the star in a tight formation, on the jump to my territory, or in pairs for mutual protenction if there is more than one jump, and maxing the fighters and bombers to give offensive firepower throughout the GW. Never seen a AI starbase on a star GW too.