Is the Sins AI really that bad compared to other strategy games' AI? It doesn't seem any worse to me. AI is just AI and it will always be crippled compared to what a human can do (unless you're talking about a game like chess). It can be tweaked a little bit, but even if the AI stopped building siege frigates and made a siege capital ship and some more LRFs instead it still wouldn't be much tougher (just a little less annoying).
I do think that there is some room for the AI's micro of ships and abilities in battle to improve, but I'm not sure how it could get much better on the macro-strategy scale. We might say that it could build more LRFs or stop building refineries, but whatever it does, it will probably be easily counterable. The macro strategic considerations in this game are just too complex for the AI to do them well, especially if having to deal with issues raised by having teamates in locked team games (or diplomatic issues in unlocked games) are considered. That is not a knock on Ironclad, that's just the way AI is right now and it will probably be like that until we have artificial sentience.
What can you do? Play 1 v 9 against the AI in locked teams at the hardest difficulty levels. Play it on custom maps that are designed to be unfair for a certain team or at least for your starting location. (Perhaps design one like that in Galaxy Forge.)
Sadly, AI technology just cannot compete against human intelligence and ingenuity at this point and it's unfair to accuse Ironclad of bad AI programming or fraud for that reason. People can legitimately say that the AI could be improved as they can for any strategy game, but it's improper to blame them for the AI not being as challenging (or as interesting) as playing against human opponents.
It's AI and it is what it is.
If anything, what single players who are frustrated with the AI should do is to campaign for improvements to online multiplayer that would overcome the problems they have with online multiplayer. Gaming companies have really neglected this area and it is an area that is wide open for innovation and improvement--in fact it's just wide open for a good, solid, polished online multiplayer product without any real innovation.
Have a system that keeps track of players' performance based on their CD keys and that calculates a skill rating for them, allowing for players to be matched up based on skill level.
Have some sort of a system that rates players based on their demeanor--I mean some sort of a system that gives players a "demeanor rating" based on how they talk to other people (having nothing to do with game play). This way jerks could be teamed up with jerks and mature players with mature players. Exactly how this would be implemented, I have no idea. Perhaps some sort of a good/bad karma system could be worked out. This would be innovative.
Implement some sort of a "hot seat" system where players can join a game in progress and take over for a dropped player. This would also allow people who don't have the time needed for an online Sins games to come play it online from time to time. This does have its downside, though--lack of strategic continuity and awareness of what's going on in the game, for example. The hot seat ability could be made optional so that game hosts could chose for games ("locked games") to not have the hot seat option.
Sins could really use some sort of a way to shorten the amount of time needed to play it online. Quick Start was a great idea, but perhaps there could be an improved quick start ("Quicker Start") where players start out with their home terran, a colonized asteroid, and another colonized planet or two. We also need a speed setting that would be about 25% faster than the current fastest setting.
Allow for custom map auto-download. Not only does this encourage people to create free content for the game--increasing the value of the game product at little to no cost for the developers--but it allows for a "free market" to emerge in the maps area. The good maps will get played while the bad ones won't. Some sort of a cache system would need to be developed with it being easy to move the maps to other areas. Also, let players make their own map classification folders so they can have as many as they want. For example, maybe someone wants to create a special folder or classification for "Good custom maps", "Good Team custom maps", "No Rush customs", etc. Set it up so that if players have the map in any one of their map folders they wouldn't need to auto-download that map.
Consider allowing custom mod auto-download.
Set up built-in voice comm. Allow team chat, chat to everyone, and chat to a specific player and also allow people to mute players from the opposing team and any specific players they want. Also allow friends to chat with one another if they are on the network.
Improve the user interface so that people can have multiple (type) chat channels open and be able to switch to them while in game. Also keep logs of the in-game chat. For example, a player might press a button (say F7) to bring up the log of the in-game chat. This makes it easier for players who were heavily occupied (bathroom, big fight) to see what the chat was while they were occupied.
Improve the "Join Game" part of the interface to reflect options in available games for all of these changes. Let it show if there is a custom map, if there is a custom mod(s) and what it is, etc.
Come up with an online multiplayer tutorial.
Create a system that matches up new players with other new players. Perhaps have an (optional) special area that only CD-Keys that have been online for 30 days can access. Make another optional one for CD-Keys that have been online for 30-60 days, etc.
Come up with some sort of an unobtrusive system to politely invite single players to play multiplayer in humans v. AI games and noobies v. noobies game. Perhaps, once every two weeks (after someone has had the game for 2 months), they could receive an invitation. "Click Yes to Save your current game and to join other new players for a 5v5," or "to play a game with two human allies against 7 AI."
