Heh, that's one of the changes.  The AI is a lot more aggressive now and is willing to lose a lot more ships before retreating.  Also the only difference between Hard, Unfair, and Normal is the size of the resource cheat. 

Well, that's completely true. It's always been said (as the OP pointed out) that the harder difficulties had some extra routines. These weren't fully substantiated in terms of breakdowns of what Unfair does that Normal doesn't, other than that the Normal AI is less likely to gang up on the top player. And anyone who's played FFA with Hard/Unfairs knows how that goes.

It's unfortunate that aggressive behavior was inserted without better intelligence to go with it. I don't expect grand master chess play, however some common sense would certainly be useful. I have seen some great changes like siege frigates moving around the system instead of driving straight into defensive platforms.

The reason for jumping into a system with a fleet is to either capture the system or at least start the attrition process. The AI is constantly sending scouts in to maintain intel on each planet (wise move). The reason to move a fleet into a system should not happen unless one of the two goals I mentioned can be accomplished. There are many simple algorithms such as:

TotalSystemHitPts/FleetDPS*AverageSystemCost <= FleetTotalHitPts/SystemDPS*AverageFleetCost*AggressiveFactor

Even if controlling entry is not done someting simple like comparing a couple of simple numbers such as based on length of time of current combat when will the system defenses be depleted compared to when will the fleet be eliminated. If the fleet is going to lose the battle then retreat. Capital ships are very expensive to replace, throwing them away is not far from giving up, especially since they just go back and build replacements. Another simple rule would be to retreat a capital when it's shields are depleted and the remaining hit points drop below 65% of full strength.

I've done single player (v1.12) with 1vs5 FFA against all Hard (locked teams) and didn't really see any substantial difference between normal and hard at that time. I will say that either I'm getting better or Entrenchment Normal got weaker. I would love to see some meaningful AI put into the game instead of falling back on resource mismatch to increase difficulty. It seems with all of the talent and experience available in this forum that some good AI could be achieved without significantly increasing the realtime work load of the game.

just my 2 cents

  Very very interesting!     I'm just learning mp and this is good to know, thank you.

-Teal

I got one on a 9Unfair AI map going on, FFA (never allied once or even accepted a trade alliance) I conquered one system on a Huge Random map, and dropped a cluster of Starbases (mostly to protect my trade starbase) but I inadvertently dropped all 4 of them in the phase lane from the other major system (The 3 remaining are small resource systems) and the AI keeps sending small is groups to their untimley demise.  Now, it's not impossible to break a starbase group like that, I'd like to see some behavior that causes them to spam Antistructure cruisers in this situation.  Also I'd like to see the AI attempt to deploy starbases more intelligently (The latest update was good, but it can be better as will be explained)  One key is somehow causing the AI to cluster some defenses around the starbase (Start off by making them deply the bases closer in the gravity well)  A starbase alone is extremely vulnrable to strike craft or Anti-structure cruisers.  Stick some Beams, Missles or Gauss and (Especially if TEC) Hangars and you exponentially increase the threat of a starbase.  Combine this also with (When it finally works) the Offword Government, and you have something that even Online is a real threat (Forcing a player to devote resources to break that means something in their territory is suscepible). 

General Improvement list for brief viewing:

Better assessment of threats (Larger fleet sizes for attacks, better counters for extreme defense)

More intelligent Defense and Starbase deployment and upgrades:  Deploy starbases closer to planets defensive zone allowing additional defense structures to be placed around.  Priority upgrades like Max hull integrity:(All starbases) Weapon Systems (All starbases)  Max Fight Squadrons (Uncolonizable gravity wells)  ect.

Better fleet compisition: The Vasari seem to be the only ones playing fleets right, Tons of Deatheggs and maybe 1 Marauder to phasejump reinforcments.  TEC and Advent seem lacking, TEC spamming Sovas (Fix Sova or stop the AI from building them, it's virtually a waste of a capital ship)  Advent spamming Rapture and Revalation, and not deploying any Radiance.  The occasional mothership makes an appearance.  Additional, have them prioritize more capital ships.  If I can afford it without a resource cheat, they can

More Research: Though they have started researching stuff like Insurgency, there's still no sign of research on the Expirimental weapons.  With this should be an option to turn off X-weapons for people who don't like them.  Personally I'd like to see the AI build a Novalith or something once in a while.

Capital ship training: a level 1 capital ship is weaker than a few heavy cruisers, so why doesn't the AI use it's virtually unlimited money to buy more levels to make them worthwile?

As I understand it from this exchange there's Easy (really stupid play and reduced resources), normal (better AI although not full and full resources), Hard (full AI and extra resources) and finally Unfair (double resources and full AI). I guess I'd like to see a difficulty setting where the resources are equal and full AI is in use...would be easy to implement if the above is true.

Got in a 3v3 comp stomp last night against 3 Hard Vasari AI all with aggressor turned on. Definitely much better than normal, although difficult to tell if logic is different. With the extra resources when an AI jumps into a system it now has more ships and two of the AIs did coordinate and were in the same system getting ready to move to one of our owned systems. I don't know if the coordination was purposeful or coincidental because of same logic moving them to that location. Was definitely exciting as both fleets were about three times (didn't get an exact ship cuont) the size of the fleet that our live player had on that side of the map, so we shared resources and rushed reinforcements to help out.

Did learn something new last night. As a single player I can only place one SB per planet (known), however my partners can place one in a system where I already have one. So at one choke point we placed three SB where pirates would come thorugh to get to our systems and you can imagine the loses that they took.

Still sacrificed ships when it wasn't necessary, although it did run a couple of times when it should have. Mixed use of mines was seen and well placed. Starbases still mixed, most of the time they weren't upgraded so easy kill. We did run into a single SB that was sitting at 16K hits and 8k shields. So that one took a little more to kill.

That's what I thought as well.

In fact, I'd prefer having two different settings at game start: AI intelligence level and AI resources.