Where was your fleet while all this was happening?

multi's fleet was destroyed..... by me!

*dreams*

Multi, beaten by scurvy dogs, for shame....

30 frigates jump outsystem, 5 frigates jump back insystem. Shark outside the system.

Well chiefy, it sounds to me like you be needin more planets or that you should be upgradin your fleet capacity.

Lucky! I had 18,000 credits on my head just because I took one asteriod! Wow the AI like revenge! Good thing pirates were off!

Pirates are fun except when they try and kill three asteroids at the same time. Right now im being invaded right and left by pirates  

they are super agressive, a group of pirates blitzkrieged through 4 periferal planets of mine and attacked my capitol planet with incredible forces! I nearly lost my capitol! (thankfully 2 gauss cannon cover fire, 3 or so LRMS frigs and the Ton Illustrius of my ally kept it alive)
after that I researched crisis recovery immediately. god that was fun/terrible.

then weaken the insurgency

insurgencies shouldnt hurt your opponent, they should simply tie up his resources if he expands too far.

Insurgents do seem a bit too dangerous for the AI. Playing with marauders off, I got insurgency first and they apparently finished off the last AI held locations in my home system for me (two asteroids, I'd already taken all his planets). Someone else also researched it around the same time and I started getting periodic raids myself, but after losing one asteroid I upped the tactical levels and set up hangars everywhere and that seems to handle them well enough.

When I made it to the other system though, I found not less than three or four juicy planets had been wiped clean by the pirates, and one of the AIs in that system was completely gone (judging from the strength of the other two AIs there, it wouldn't be a stretch to lay the blame on the pirates).

They still do that on hard too, and same here, I wish the Skirmish AI also attack with the ferocity that the Pirate do because right now as ironically as it sound, Pirate is the only one who can sufficiently pose a threat.

could you guys implement a stripped-down replay system (where you see everything)? it would make this sort of analysis FAR easier...

With the replay function still busted it will be hard to tell what actually happened. I played another game, and i held off on researching insurgency until after the AI researched it. During the end game it was the pirates that were the only serious threat to me. I had to fortify every system i owned or risk losing it, because they spawn randomly at any given system. Meanwhile my fleets were fighting both the AI's defenses and the pirates that spawned from my insurgency research. I have yet to see the AI build an effective fleet. It doesnt matter what difficulty i set i will see maybe 1, or 2 AI ships jump into one of my systems, and i never see any ships when i invade their systems. Once in a while and enemy frigate or 2 will jump in to try and defend, but that would be vs a major cap ship fleet, and pointless. I think the AI isnt as good in this beta as it was in beta 1. The AI just wont muster up a fleet and attack you. After the AI loses its flagship thats all she wrote. Like i said before i would like the AI to be as aggressive, and coordinated as the pirates.

There are 2 levels of insurgency you can research. The 1st level (this is just speculation) spawns small pirate fleets (mixed bag of frigs). The second level will spawn full planet killing 30+ ship corsair/siege/support fleets. I had to fight one of these big fleets when i invaded and AI sys with insurgency lvl 2 researched.

Im not sure how it stacks up. Just 1 players lvl 2 insurgency is pretty devastating. I would hate to think if 3 or more players can stack.

the pirates in my last game where ignoring me guess they didn't want to tangle with my 20 ffs and flag ship