Well, having been a victim of the Torons using a black hole creator on me in a PBW max tech game, I can attest to the fact that the AI does indeed use stellar manipulation. We had a 3 planet start, so I had homeworlds in two different systems. I was under attack by three different AI races including the Torons, and they had breached my warp point defenses on one of my homeworld systems. I concentrated my defensive forces on my homeworld and felt pretty secure until the Torons turned the star into a black hole and wiped everything out.
