[Rollo]

If a Kamikaze or Boarding Ship is built on another world does it move to the homeworld?

yes

If an invader enters the system will the Kamikaze or Boarding Ship move to engage?

yes and no. They might try to engage and then 'chicken out' on second thought. The AI is easily scared by superior numbers and since all these ships would engange on their own it is not really effective. That is the big downside of not using fleets. (but more on this later)

Since Sat Layers work is it safe to assume that Mine Layers will work too?

yes

What about Stellar Manipulation Ships? They will open additional Wrap Points, I assume, but will they explore them?

The warp point openers would not explore (fairly certain). I have noticed an odd tendency by the AI, however, to not open warp points from their home system though. So they might not open any warp points at all, even when they have a ship available.

Again, Rollo, thank you for looking into this. With so many of the Old Guard AI designers missing it is gret that you still respond to inquiries like this.

You are welcome. Hey, this is a hobby of mine .

Because of the poor performance of the single boarding and kamikaze ships I tried something else: Defense Ships. I removed all the kamikaze and boarding ships from the queue and built only Defense Ships as warships. Also I set the 'Fleets Dont Use For Num Turns' back to 10, so the defense ships would form fleets.

Defense ships build their own fleets and don't mix with attack, carriers, boarding, etc. I just tested this and found that defense fleets do not explore. And they do engage the enemy in a much more efficient way then the lone ships would .

Hope this helps. It certainly gives me some food for thought on implementing monsters and other nasty things .

Rollo