[Bman]

lol. good idea with the AI. Have it be uberpowerful but never attacks and never trades/gifts. And make sure its ships are fairly immune to ship capture which i guess they would be if they were uber powerful. But you need to make it go megaevil on your butt when you are dominating the other *human* players. By definition, the AI needs to be more powerful than you already. I don't think the mega-evil setting will ever kick in.

Actually PPP is not really a game breaker. It *can* be defended against by either your own intel or by crushing the guy with the intel facilities. And I'd hate to not have warp-closers. What if you just modd'ed out the system shield facility? Tell people not to lock up a system by taking advantage of the the 10-warppoint limit. If they do, you go mega-evil on their butt...

Instead of building a ringworld, place one in the center of the map with no warp-points leading to it. Make sure all the starting positions are an equal distance from the center. Now people just need to develop warp-opener tech to reach it. It does not require a large construction investment, so there is incentive for people to strive for it, since owning it gives a definate advantage. Your same rules apply as far as how to win.

For extra grins, tell everyone it will be rock/oxy. Then people can choose to be rock/oxy for the mega-population if they get it or they can be something different and hope everyone else is rock/oxy (so they get more worlds to colonize)
That would be fun.