I am currently playing a scenario of the Campaign and noticed something that seemed kind of weird/funny. The Arcaens and Altarians, as my allies, developed an extremely strong military forces, yet even though they could have easily crushed the opposing Yor & Drengin, they chose to keep to themselves. Being even farther away from the enemy than they were, I chained together some influence starbases so I could get past my *own* ship range problems and get some forces down there. The Arcaens and Altarians had a bunch of their ships just flying around what must have been the farthest range they could go from their own territory with the life support systems they had (like they were trapped in a bubble). When I entered enemy territory, I was bum-rushed by a bunch of Drengin ships that themselves looked like they'd been built up over a long period of time but couldn't reach anything to attack.
I figured either of two things are happening here. It may be the AI prioritizes life support research extremely low and it's not programmed to understand what it needs to do to expand (expand influence, design longer-ranged ships, etc). Then again, it could be a restriction written into this particular campaign module because the designers want the human player to finish off the enemy planets. I haven't played anything but the campaign at this point, so I thought I'd pose this question: has anyone else noticed this behavior out of the AI in the regular game? If so, I imagine it's a bug Stardock might want to fix...
