My friends and I love CO-OP AI games. We have played several games now (we coordinated some, um, sick time...) and this is what we are noticing:
1) THE AI runs too much. It is like chasing your tail except through node lines. In some sense it makes sense to run, but a lot of the times it runs when it is either an even fight or if it is going to lose a colony and it should try to inflict attrition for attacking and buy time. Too many times all you need to do is get a slightly better force than the comp and it will run when you jump into the system. So you wipe out the system. Jump to the next one. It runs. Kill system. Repeat until it has no economy left and makes a "last stand" with the same force it has a few planets ago but now it is out of the game even if the fight boils down to both sides losing most of their forces since the AI has nothing left to rebuild. Also, its just NOT FUN chasing the AI all over the place as it will never stand and fight. Pirate fights tend to be the only fun fights to be had. The games tends to fail at the "epic fights" category when playing the AI due to its affinity for running.
2) It fails to transition to mid game economy most of the time. We have started checking for "credits made from trade" or look at refinery income in the end game stats. Nearly every game the AI has nothing. It seems easy for it to fail to realize the necessity of getting extra income online. Such as wasting a lot on a pirate bid that he loses anyway rather than getting a trade center or two.
3) Siege Frigate fleets. A lot has been said about this. So I will not say much other than to say it is annoying that the only thing it will reliably attack with is siege frigates. Everything else jumps out right away (see 1). But they will still run all over the place after they kill their target.
4) In the few multi star games we played, the AI was poor at moving from star to star (if it did it at all).
I mention this stuff because I feel confident that StarDock and Ironclad are listening and are concerned with the AI.
