[igoblin]

Yes I agree that more work still needs to be done for strategic combat but It has come a long way since Version 1.02.

I recently tested ship capture and planet capture and the AI works better than I expected. It will hold back the troop transports when capturing a planet until the escorts have been wiped out or all the planetary defenses have been eliminated. Also satellites are now placed next to the planet so they actually help in defense. (before if I remember correctly the satellites would be placed on the map in the corner where they wouldn't help at all.

The change fleets button in the simulator is a newly added feature and as far as I can tell it's not fully implemented yet. I haven't had the experience of ships acting differently in strategic vs. tactical combat other than the random factor involved with to-hit chances.

A couple more possible bugs I would to add (though I may just not have my ship strategies set up correctly for what I want them to do):
Multiplex tracking doesn't seem to work, at least not on a starbase. I had the largest starbase armed with ten Heavy mounted AntiProton Beams attacked by ten Cruiser with Anti-Proton Beams and Shield Depleters. The starbase would only fire three of its APBs a turn, usually enough to destroy one cruiser and then not fire any of its remaining shots even though it had Multi-plex tracking 5. Has anyone else noticed this?

Also when I pitted a boarding ship against a starbase, the boarding ship ran to the corner and didn't attack the starbase. I had shield depleters on the boarding ship so I would assume it would follow the secondary strategy of Optimal Firing Range when the base still had shields up but it seemed to use Don't Get Hurt instead. Is it possible the AI knows that the shield depleters would never get through the shields fast enough?