Some valid points SJ.
There's also some problems with project costs and effects with stock intel as well. For example, the Delete Research project will subtract 10,000,000 points from a target's project - rather than just set it back to 0, it actually goes like -10,000,000 points and then takes 200 years to research! Another example is that planet rebellion only costs 5,000 intel points... nor that the effect amounts for some projects are just too high - easily wiping out the resource stores of a player in the early game.
