Re: AI Design creation and 2 more questions
 

You could have it select additional weapon types for a single design by using bogus abilities instead of weapon families, but overloading weapon families would work better if you mean to have weapons obsolete each other, rather than needing many families of weapon on a single ship.

Programming a willing human is often easier than programming an AI. To give the AI a head start in research, just voluntarily restrict your own research for the desired number of turns, according to whatever rules you invent.

As for cheese, it really belongs in SPACE FOOD EMPIRES mod - I was shocked to see that it is not there. Someone should petition Captain Kwok.

PvK