I started a new game as the Feds yesterday and wow, for the first time in many solo games, i'm not the best developed race. I started of in the centre (dead centre
) of the map surrounded by other races and 2 of them where immediately hostile. So by the time i dealt with the threats, i hadn't developed a lot of planets and was only 11th.
Now i'm currently 6th because i have researched ice colonization. It seems to me that if the ai's would research other colonization stuff earlier i would have effectively been dead. Now i can creap back by researching ice and gas and thus take all the planets in their systems that they can't colonize.
I also used shuttles (fighters) for the first time to clean up warppoints defended by sats.
I lost some due to mines so i might send in a couple of minesweepers first. If i set them to "Don't get hurt" will they be hurt by the sats?
Anyway a very very entertaining game. All ai's develop rather well