[Paladin]

This battleStation seems a bit extreme, but it is fairly impregnable... (did you see the upkeep costs??)

On the other hand, I once had one of my advanced colonies toasted even if it had an equivalent baby (well, only 3rd generation, but that was more than all oponents ;-)

The station just happened to be on the far side of the planet, so the ennemy fleet just shot the colony to death, and was afterwards obliterated by the station...
I remained with a perfectly invincible defense base with endless supplies above a dead planet, holding off entire armadas of incomming ships... (it was no in ennemy territory ;-))

I can see it would still be feasible to get past one of those stations, like with a massive shield disruptor (say, model II with 2000 shield points) and boarding parties (lots of them, did I hear "SelfDestructDevice?" ;-)
On the other hand, I can barely begin to imagine the glimmers of the kind of AI that would be needed for this and I'm at my desk in an AI Univ. Lab ;-)

A human player could get around if he really wanted to, but a computer would have a real hard time to do so...
Maybe somekind of multiagent system...
(having the ministers as independant agents would be cool, imagine them "argue" over a course of action ;-))

[This message has been edited by Paladin (edited 24 August 2000).]