Ok, I've not seen what happens with Warp Relays yet, since I've been managing my threat buildup, but I have noticed that a SINGLE ZENITH STARSHIP was causing the AI to give notice it was 50% done with one. Which... seemed odd. But there were other threat there prior, the Zombie Generator dealt with them, so maybe they caused it to reach that point. Otherwise I have no real stance on them yet. Seems that if you can manage your threat than Warp Relays don't pose much of a danger. Not sure if this was intended or not, but seems ok to me. If you super turtle, fine, but you need to keep the AI off your front lawn, of they are going to jump the fence and suddenly be inside your house.
My mention on hacking stands though. With the new change to how it is calculated, repeated hacking is becoming more and more costly, even though I have HaP to spare. Granted my only hacking so far has been Design Download and Research Rediction, which are fairly big projects. I think the scaling increase on hacking options needs to be reduced, perhaps down to a 25%-30% increase rather than 50%. Now I am admittedly playing at the high AIP scale, so I don't know how much of an impact that this would have on a more standard, low AIP game. But my reasoning for this is fairly simple. I am playing a High AIP game, which means I get more HaP than I would otherwise get. IMO, this should mean I can get away with more hacking because I paid for it with AIP.
