On to my 2nd game now, and some more observations:

- When you 'right-mouse click' pan the camera angle, the cursor creeps in the direction you are viewing. This can be anhoying because as the cursor creeps towards the edge of the screen the view starts to slide in that direction and you lose focus on whatever object you were originally panning the camera angle around.

- The easy CPU AI is too easy it simply has no chance of winning unless you go afk or commit suicide. Specifically it wants to turtle around its homeworld instead of expanding to other planets.

- I've not played a multiplayer game yet but I must say at this point it worries me that it takes so long to complete. I know from playing CoH that in a 4 vs 4 game the dropout rate is awful once the game goes beyond 45mins. I could see 2 evenly matched players taking quite some time to turn a strong position or advantage into a victory.

- Love the graphical effects on damaged vessels, best I've seen anywhere.

On to my 3rd game now....

- Medium CPU AI was more aggressive, built more ships and fought battles better but it still turtled and opted for a bounty strategy which might have worked if the pirates had acted on it. It was still too easy I shouldn't really have been able to beat a medium AI so soon.

- Even though the game was quite easy going it still took a long time to finish, it took a bit too long and ended up going afk whilst I left 3 capships to finish off the AI's planet.

- One of my dreadnoughts refused to obey the context attack command to hold position, it was hell bent on charging down Gauss platforms which eventually killed it. I tried to cancel the orders and re-issue them but it made no dfference I had to order it to move back every 30s but left it to die in the end.

- Can't seem to select ships whilst they are in phase jump.

- Having a player colour which is similar to the solar background(s) is a problem as you cannot easily determine the unit type from the left hand side window.

On to my 4th game and:

- Hard CPU AI was tougher but no real challenge, this time the AI did colonize an adjacent asteroid system until I sent in 4 Kol Destroyers. It tried the same tactic of turtling or very slow expansion whilst increasing the bounty on me. Pirates did attack this game but they were more of a distraction than a real threat.

- Bandbox selecting objects can get a little tricky when other object are in view, for example I was trying to target a frigate flying past a planet in my field of view. I had to be very precise to get the target orders correct.

- I like the dark space backround image best the green & red backgrounds don't look quite right atm they are a little too strong in colour.

- I noticed the info cards on units does not include their speed?

- Kol Destroyer doesn't seem to have any engine activity effects yet unless I missed it.

- Game time was 1h 40mins which again is too long for a 1 vs 1 against the CPU, though Im sure with practice I will improve on this greatly.

Again, TFL, there is a major bug in the current generation of AI preventing it from being effective until the next patch. And by that I mean computer opponents generally don't leave their home system... at all.

Which maps do they work on? I'd love to be able to play single player "bites" when I don't have time for a full up multiplayer game.

Dunno about the premade maps. But on the maps I did for myself, the AI does work (at least I see no difference between now and the AI from the last beta. Doesn't mean much, though. )

Edit: Fire and Ice works with the AI, for example.

I would be happy to help out once ATi release a SoaSE update in their patch, naturally I will be using my NV-8800 rig but its easy enough for me to switch back for a short time and provide feedback.

I will try fire & ice next, tbh I expect a Hard AI to kich me senseless at this early stage.

@Ron Lugge : I read ur 1st reply Ron and was in complete agreement but I wanted to point out that the AI does colonize outside its capital planet eventually.

I don't think I've ever seen AI research that.

Analysis of all our stats says the AI primarily loses by losing way too many ships (typically by throwing them up against walls of defense) despite typically outproducing a human early on and by mis-evaluating threats against his planets thereby causing ships on the offensive to waste time travelling back to deal with them and then back to the frontlines. The potential of what could have been gained by continuing the offensive momentum is completely lost.

(Note: this is ignoring obvious bugs like complete failure to expand and complete failure to do combat research).

lol, we don't sleep much! Testing beta 3 patch 1 at the moment. Just had a big 3 v 3.

1.25 hrs from start to the last planet nuked. We are testing the new game speed settings.