This AI is awesome.

[Aklyon]

I am hacking a world.

AI launches a tachyon missile.

Discover 3k special forces cloaked ships surrounded my core of ships.

Priceless.

In reaction or ship cost?

[chemical_art]

I am hacking a world.

AI launches a tachyon missile.

Discover 3k special forces cloaked ships surrounded my core of ships.

Priceless.

In reaction or ship cost?

The core group of ships were a MK V battleship and 100 allies. The 3k flimsy ships I think were scared. I still came out with about 50 allied ships and my champ.

The cockroaches, once exposed in the light, scampered away under my boot. 

[Vihermaali]

Did AI suddenly get more intelligent? I bought this expansion and... AI troops don't suicide anymore. I've seen 1k+ ships just wandering around AI systems (NOT my border systems), hit-and-run attacks (destroy one system, retreat), ships from neighbor systems will come to help when I attack a system with my champion and AI doesn't just blindly pile up ships on wormholes.. they retreat. I'm still playing with the same 7/7 AIs as always.

This is awesome.

[TechSY730]

Did AI suddenly get more intelligent? I bought this expansion and... AI troops don't suicide anymore. I've seen 1k+ ships just wandering around AI systems (NOT my border systems), hit-and-run attacks (destroy one system, retreat), ships from neighbor systems will come to help when I attack a system with my champion and AI doesn't just blindly pile up ships on wormholes.. they retreat. I'm still playing with the same 7/7 AIs as always.

This is awesome.

Yep. Keith has been working hard to give the AI new behaviors and better tactics.
As you can see, it is making the AI a much more interesting opponent, not to mention a bigger threat.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, from time to time we give it a new edition of "101 Ways To Exterminate Humanity"

[x4000]

That's one of the biggest advantages of how we've been developing the game on an ongoing basis.  Each year we've added various new behaviors and tactics and abilities and so forth for the AI, so each year it's become more deadly and interesting.  The new threat fleets and such are certainly a major jump upwards.

[Dichotomy]

In the middle of a CPA, an AI tractor train picks up enough firepower to alert the planet they are carried to, freeing an EMP guardian, and triggering a Core Raid Engine...

Death followed swiftly.

[Mánagarmr]

In the middle of a CPA, an AI tractor train picks up enough firepower to alert the planet they are carried to, freeing an EMP guardian, and triggering a Core Raid Engine...

Death followed swiftly.

Gotta love them Etherjet kidnappers. Have had that happen too

[Faulty Logic]

AI sent a force of cloaked neinzul shadow frigates through my black-hole enforced chokepoint to assassinate two back systems, causing an energy brownout. In the middle of a wave against my homeworld. I didn't die, but it was quite close.

[keith.lamothe]

AI sent a force of cloaked neinzul shadow frigates through my black-hole enforced chokepoint to assassinate two back systems, causing an energy brownout. In the middle of a wave against my homeworld. I didn't die, but it was quite close.

Really?  I was considering adding "sneak" logic like that for a special kind of attack to keep players honest about their tachyon coverage, but I don't think I've ever actually told it to hold fire while crossing an enemy system to get to a different one.  Maybe it's just the old "if cloaked try to stay cloaked" logic Chris added ages ago.

[x4000]

I think the logic was for them to not fire on anything except their AI-thread-chosen specific targets if they are cloaked, yeah.  So they wouldn't just fire on random things that they passed.  That was making cloaked ships pretty useless in the hands of the AI for a while there a couple of years ago.

[Ygdrad]

I'm still pretty new to the game and so was trying a 7/7 match with the AI type set to moderate. I decided to be very careful and only alert one planet at first since there were a lot of nasty ones near my homeworld. I enter one of my neighboring planets, and to my horror, the AI grabs a bunch of my ships with tractors and proceeds to pulling them through wormholes to a bunch of other systems, alerting them.

D:

Following that I got hit by a raiding force comprised of a mix of mark3 and 4 ships... never stood a chance.

Was the AI programmed to do horrible things like that or was it just trying to escape from my fleet and simply forgot it was dragging half of it along?

[Histidine]

Was the AI programmed to do horrible things like that ...?

It does like to things like that, yes  (For dealing with that specific problem in the future, select the tractored ships and press Delete to scrap them)

Oh, and welcome to AI War

[Mánagarmr]

Was the AI programmed to do horrible things like that or was it just trying to escape from my fleet and simply forgot it was dragging half of it along?

I seem to remember the "kidnapping" mechanic to be specifically coded for tractor-beam bearing vessels. But it's not doing it "to alert itself" in order to hit you with bigger ships. It's just doing it to deprive you of ships. However, the side effects can, as you've seen, be rather devastating

[x4000]

Was the AI programmed to do horrible things like that or was it just trying to escape from my fleet and simply forgot it was dragging half of it along?

I seem to remember the "kidnapping" mechanic to be specifically coded for tractor-beam bearing vessels. But it's not doing it "to alert itself" in order to hit you with bigger ships. It's just doing it to deprive you of ships. However, the side effects can, as you've seen, be rather devastating

Actually, it's for both purposes -- alerting itself as well as depriving you of units.  It wouldn't drag them so far if it just wanted to deprive you of units.  I made them run over a number of planets specifically to make them more dastardly.