Last night I had an AI player send a reasonably large, well designed fleet deep into my territory (bypassing several fronteir planets) and fight long and hard to almost destroy one of my planets. Of cource, once the battle swung obviously in my favour it ran like a little schoolgirl, but I had to have fairly overwhelming force on hand before it took off.
The first thing I do after I [B]buy [/B]a game is look for the copy-protection removal hacks online so I can play it without the DVD in my drive. When people who legally buy games still use pirate hacks, it's a pretty good sign that copy protection is stupid. Long term, I see the PC gaming industry needs to start skewing slightly 'older' than the consoles - older gamers have more money to actually buy games, and are less likely to muck around with pirate versions. Stardock see
Pirates are great. They provide a spark of unpredictability in what can otherwise turn into a methodical, step-by-step game. They serve the same purpose as the barbarians in the Civ series. And yes, they are brilliant at levelling up capital ships! I have never lost a planet because of pirates. Enemy fleets, yes, but not pirates. Thier fleets look intimidating, but decent planetary defences will always hold them off long enough for a small defensive fleet to be built and/or
Against a large number of AI players, I have found the AI to be entertainingly inconsistent. On 1.03 I have found the computer will often jump through my planets until it finds a nice target to attack - ignoring the lesser, better defended but expendable planets it finds on the way. Annoying (in a good way!), given that I used to only build up defences on my 'frontier' planets - now I need to keep several fleets floating around my 'inner' planets as well.
Cylons.
