Here's the story:

I was in a great game, I had the most resource income with 10 plannets, while my opponent had 5.  I began to press my opponent, and I noticed he had a gate, and some civic research stations (whatever).  I quickly targeted the civic research stations knowing he was going for RA, but I didn't think he could have actually achived it at that point, but I knew he was close.  I took out the stations and though that would buy me some time.  I took the plannet and pressed his homeworld, again destroying more gates and civic stations, his fleet came back in full force, and I destroyed them easily.  I moved on to the next plannet but a small force counter attacked me so I pulled back to stop them.  (I latter saw this was just a distraction.)  I again began attacking his plannets but encountered a larger fleet and was destroyed.  Game Over.

Watching the replay showed I was just minutes short of destroying his stations to put a damper on his RA.  Futhermore, had I know he had RA, I would have sent a fleet ahead just to fly around and take out those expensive gates (can't afford to keep rebuilding those when you have no homeworld and are being crushed by enemy culture).  If only I'd know, looking back it obvious I was kind of stupid.  I did scout and knew he was close, but I though I stoped him in time.

Is there anyway to tell for sure if your enemy has RA up and running?

The way's I know are this:  You can see their ships appearing out of no-where and jumping in (if you happen to be watching at just the right moment).  I guess you could also be clued in by their fleet compolation (another thing I handn't thought of); "hmm, no subverters, but he has 15 skirmishers mixed in with his enforcers, looks fishy."

On a side note, I don't approve of the having to pay even more to use RA in the next patch.  Once you get it going it should be free.  I don't know though.  Does it cost much to activate a gate in?  Can you set it to auto spend your resource and bring in the DA?  I don't want to be having to remember every 10 minutes to go through all my gates and manually activate RA.

Thanks.