It's been an interesting week. I've played several games against the AI (1v1) and (2v2, 3v3, 2v2v2v2 with friends).

It's interesting, we've had some cake-walks but then we get some games where each AI just spams major fleets, like 4 caps, 20 Guardians, 30 Drones, 30 Disciples (I'm used to playing Advent, these are the equivalents for each race).

We don't turtle, we're constantly pushing, taking over planets and then all of a sudden, these huge fleets come out.

I don't get how the AI is able to get that big of a fleet. I'm scrapping barely able to put out 2-3 frigates / cruisers every few minutes. One of my friends seems to do pretty good on the money front, easily getting 2-3x more than me, but he doesn't really know what he's doing and can't tell me how the money is rolling in.

In one case, early, early game, I took out the AI's level 1 cap ship and I'm not kidding, like 5 min later there was another one (counting travel time, so he was building it within 1-2 min at least). I don't get how he was able to fund 3,000 for another cap at that early in the game. The only thing I can think of is the AI really doesn't spend a lot on research.

So, here are my Q's:

1. How can I watch a replay of one of our games? How? I see no games when I go into MP "Load game" or "watch game"...nothing comes up.

2. Can I watch a replay from the perspective of another player? How? If possible, how do I watch / see when/where they do their research?

3. What are the dials to get more $$ (I've upgraded my home planets to max health and have trade ports at all my planets). I basically average 15-25/sec total income across all my planets / trade. This isn't enough to really do anything (maybe a ship a minute).

4. Should you have trade ports at every planet or just the fringes?

5. It appears that spam (sheer numbers) beats any kind of fleet comp. In one AI game where I was getting crushed, I restarted from a save point, built 40 Delta Crusaders, 20 Drones and I had 4 cap ships and had shields / armor / plasmas / you name all maxed out on research tree and got anilihated against this absurd fleet from the AI. So I gather that spam is better than researching?

6. Is there a way when I double click on a planet for that planet to show up in the tree on the left? I'm tired of clicking on a planet, selecting ships to focus on an enemy and the tree moving so I have to scroll to find the ship to attack. When I'm on a planet, I want that planet to be on the top and I don't want it to move (everything is pinned by default)

7. Is there a way to see everything queued up in research besides going into the tech tree and looking for all the '1's ??

8. Is there any way to change the targetting priority of ships? In some cases, the cap ships are less of a worry that the hordes of small ships and I'd like to target the frigates / cruisers and leave the cap ships alone. This way I can pop in to a planet and actually destroy something before having to retreat and gaining some xp in the process.

9. Are there any tricks to coming into a system and being able to retreat without having the ships do this ridiculous circle back to the phase lanes? I lose way too many ships because of this. It takes them like 2 min to position themselves to exit. What are tricks to avoid this?

Well, that's enough for now. I'm hoping a few of you out there can help out. I really think watching replays can show a lot, as long as I can deduce fromt the replays what people are actually doing.