2. The primary difference between AI difficulties is how much they "cheat" with regards to income rates. Higher difficulties get higher income rates.

4. Culture centres cause that planet to start producing culture - planets where your culture dominates will have allegiance increase if you or an ally owns the planet and decrease if an enemy owns the planet.

5. Mostly insignificant by that stage of the game. A few defense platforms backed up by a repair bay can handle everything but the LRMs (which outrange the static platforms) and siege frigates (which will avoid the platforms to try to get a clear shot at the planet).

6. The delay becomes noticeable as the game needs to track more ships - it's simply the fact that the game needs to keep tabs on more ships and this takes more time as the number of ships grows.

7. Kol only.

8. Any superweapon can fire on any planet you've explored, plus other limitations depending on weapon. Novaliths and Kosturas can only target enemy planets, Deliverance Engine targets must have population (friendly or hostile).

Yup, one of the few great fleet killing abilities of the TEC (and the only one if not TEC Rebels), so use it!

They're also really expensive and take a while to pay themselves off. While its good against the AI, if you ever get into competitive PVP games putting to much money into trade ports and especially star bases means your enemy probably has a better fleet than you, which unlike the AI a human player will use it to try and kill you ASAP.

A little bit, but the destroyer also earns about 50 resources from that. So its probably more of a reward for destroying them then a punishment for letting them get destroyed.

Sometimes the AI is almost brilliant in Rebellion, sometimes its totally stupid. That's probably rare but I can't say I'm totally surprised.

Your allegiance will be boosted at any planet under the influence of friendly culture. Since culture spreads from any planet with a culture center, in theory 1 culture center can max out the allegiance of your entire Empire.

They're annoying, but its usually a heavy cruiser or two, a siege frigate, a light frigate and a long range frigate. Really they're only a threat to undefended planets, not really worth the level 8 tech.

I believe they do occasionally.

Itself. Though since it regenerates the ability cost in antimatter, you're basically getting the shield regeneration, AoE damage and reduced cooldowns for free.

Yes they can.

Its guns are all on the exterior though. Means the ship is probably mostly armor as it doesn't need a big reactor as it has no energy weapons.

1. When enemy attacks and destroys your civilian ships, Refinery/Trade ships, does this disrupt your income? Does each ship produce a certain amount of resources?

 ANS: Yes, income will drop when refinery and trade ships die. As more of these ships fall, income falls proportionately.

2. Are Easy AI's really Easy? i have played a few FFA matches and i find an Easy AI pinning down a more "Harder" AI and taking there planets. On one occasion, an "Easy" sent 10 cap ships (all lvl 4) at my planet, funnily enough, they were all Jarrasul evacuators and demolished my planet. 

ANS: Compared with the same play style (i.e. easy aggressor vs normal aggressor), they are of a lower difficulty. It is likely that your example featured either an easy aggressor or researcher against a hard economist.

3. Do AIs offer missions to pirates?

ANS: On the harder difficulties and sometimes even on normal, yes. I've been attacked by pirates and enemy fleets at the same time without the pirates ever turning on the enemy fleet, although thus far I've seen only TEC Rebel AIs do this.

4. Does placing culture centres at your planet boost the allegiance of nearby planets you own and the one it is at?

ANS: Correct, culture spreads through the system, slowing proportionately as it passes through a gravity field.

5. How exactly, threatening is Insurgency? - Wiki says they spawn some ships and randomly attack planet. I've never seen any insurgents. 

ANS: Insurgency only takes effect it an enemy planet is in sway of your culture, i.e. negates enemy culture boost or reducing enemy allegience. Frigates spawned are generally few in number, and can be easily wiped out by modest defenses, but do provide a valuable distraction, especially the 1st time it happens, and forces the enemy to redeploy resources to defense.

6. Sometimes my Cielo's and Hoshiko's don't auto-use their abilities.. i have to manually embolden my caps and manually issue repair orders, kinda annoying cause my comp gets a bit-laggy in big fleet battles, hard to micro-manage. 

ANS: The fleet AI controls ur ships to deploy abilities based on overall battle engagement as well as proximity to available target ships. This means that Cielo's will not spam Designate Target cuz the whole point of the ability is to focus fire on a few ships to destroy them quickly. Likewise, Hoshiko's will not spam repair cuz the damage sustained must exceed a certain threshold and the ship must be in reasonable distance.

7. Is the "Finest Hour" an buff for the Kol Battleship itself or is it applied to nearby ships too

ANS: Its only for the Kol.

8. Do Novaliths fire at planets in other star systems?

ANS: Absolutely.

9. Not a question but - anyone notice how small the Garda is..? it's got more armor than ships 4-5 times its size.

ANS: A hidden mechanic in the game is armor type and they come in a variety of classes e.g. heavy, light capital. The armor on a Garda gives it high defense against bombers and fighters, but leaves it highly vulnerable against any other attack ship. That high armor rating actually only really applies to aircraft, against ships the armor is actually poorer than the basic cobalt in reducing damage. See this thread for a full breakdown on armor types:

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/379562

Oh i also figured that Economist AI are worthless at fighting, just like Unazaki said, increasing AI intelligence only increases its usefulness moderately, Agressors - well now, Aggressors are definitely a tougher AI to deal with. 

Vicious AIs cheat alot... i was 1st in economy but when i look at end of game line graphs, the AI produced 11x more Credits than me through planet income..

+1 to ruby

.....topic poster should play more online

3-4 marzas MUAHAHAHA