[rdouglass]

Count my vote. I also miss that feature from SE3. I really like the idea of setting up AI opponents with different advanced traits - not necessarily racial traits, just advanced. Like what was mentioned for the Borg.

For instance, you could advance 1 AI's troops, another AI's fighters, anothers missle tech. Then you wouldn't really know what defensive position you should be focusing on untill you actually meet the AI. As it is, it just seems I'm always ahead of the AI tech whenever we meet except in very early contact.

Of course, many have already stated many more detailed examples and some have done a good job of this with mods, but it would be very nice to do this kind of thing 'on the fly'...