It has single player skirmish mode. There are 4 levels of AI (6 if you have Trinity) of various types (attacker, fortifier etc.). So no, in fact most of the people who have gotten Sins probably have only played single player.

Currently 1v7 AI vicious locked is pretty hard and long. Anything less is just long.

Thanks for all the replies folks.

Base game is fun. I played it for several months before playing online and finding out I didn't really know how to play the game.

Also... find some mods. Lots of good ones to try now and some in the works.

http://ricksgalaxy.homestead.com/links.html - personal favorite for links to active mods for sins of a solar empire.

http://www.moddb.com/games/sins-of-a-solar-empire/mods - Not quite as actively updated but good to visit.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/forum/443 - Modding forums, requires a little hunting. The easier way is to get here through ricksgalaxy.

I would also love to see someone survive against 7 Vicious AI's all teamed up, what with their quintuple resource rate and mega build-time cheats.  By the 20 minute mark you should have ~600 ships attacking you at once.

On the flipside, if you start them at Easy, build up a defensive line, then save and load the game with them now set to Vicious... That would make for epic battles.

Sadly you cannot always rely on replays to showcase maps like that.  The replay desynchs and the outcomes change.  But it would make for great Youtube viewing. 

Do you work a local route or do you go over the road?  If it's the later, is it possible to play while you're resting at a truck stop that has wi-fi?  (Or do you simply not have any time to do anything other than rest at a truck stop since the dispatchers want your booty back on the road ASAP?)