Well, the trouble with score that takes mothballed ships into account is not only in multiplayer but in single player too. First, AI will consider its surrender based on your score - you can make a HUGE fleet of mothballed ships and then ask all AI's to surrender to you one after another, and with each surrender you will be even more powerful and get the rest of them to surrender more easily. This way you could almost win the game without having any real combat with enemy. I don't know about you but I think that tactic should be prevented somehow.
In multiplayer the situation is much brighter since both players are on even ground. However, the game there looks more like slaughterhouse with couple of butchers (humans) trying to kill as many sheep's (AI's) as fast as possible. Now that may not be a unbalancing factor and the game will still be won by a better player, but I don't think that AI was designed with that (sheep) role in mind.
Simply cutting (at least to 1/10th of the score) or eliminating the scoring for mothballed ships and eliminating the empty hull tactic (by counting their components into score) would improve AI value and make games more interesting. It is just my opinion though.
[This message has been edited by Daynarr (edited 06 February 2001).]