Quote Originally Posted by JetJaguar2000 View Post
Generally, I feel like this first strike stuff, and the ridiculous power of colonies, etc., is making combat really unintuitive. Between all the different ship and orbital combinations, and these mechanics (and the bugs around them) it is impossible to understand what is an appropriate defensive strategy against any given attacker. I wish it was all a bit simpler.
Colonies are overpowered because the ease with which they were taken was just about the number one complaint during beta, although their current population growth rate is bug. Although we used our entire allotment of 100 devices for testing, I think only about twenty-odd people played with any regularity, so it was pretty difficult to judge how well many of the mechanics were working. Thus colonies were given better defense, and the ship conversion to orbital defense was introduced. The patch today will reduce population growth to 1/12 of it's current rate, so going forward new colonies will not be hitting 400Mu in a few hours.

The current combat AI is always going to first strike. With the multi-threaded nature of the server and the fact that the ships and AI operate as independent entities, there is always going to be a first strike advantage. I'm willing to entertain any and all suggestions, but there are a lot of technical limitations on what the AI can be twisted to do. Honestly, this combat AI is the most complicated thing I have coded in more than 30 years. There are some aspects that I hardly even understand myself.