It's a strategy to fight against players who msas research invasion and take planets quickly.

I didn't think of that tactic, and unarmed ships is a valid parry, but there would be no need for more than one such ship in orbit. A tiny hull like a scout would be better than the small hull of the defenders. There were 4 unarmed defenders along with 2 scouts and a colony ship (that was too slow to find an uninhabited planet) hanging out over one planet as I approached with my not-so-impressive fleet of 2 small ships with a Stinger II and a drive each. Also I hadn't researched Planetary Invasion at the time, preferring to clear the path before making transports. I think the AI should put more priority to early weapons research.

The Yor do it in Sandbox mode, too. Playing a game as a custom race and not only did they build defenders with no weapons, they build defenders with shields and no weapons. Can we say, "cannon fodder?"

I restate my case for BETA4 build 16, haven't tried build 17 yet so I'm not sure it's still an issue there.. In my last crippling sandbox game (small galaxy, uncommon planets, very crowded), I lost the race for every single habitable planet but Mars. I then rushed for impulse drives and space weapons, and attacked my nearest neighbour (which happened to be Yor again) as soon as I had built my first ship. At the time they had 4 colonies, and 2-5 helpless ships parked on each of them. Those were quickly destroyed.

So I parked a lone ship above each of their worlds, ready to attack anything being built, and they built unarmed defenders. And more of them. And more. I destroyed *more than 50* defenseless ships that they built across their worlds while I researched invasion and built up my invasion forces to be able to take their planets. The Yor never built a single armed ship during the 60+ turns I needed to decimate them. When I invaded one of their planets, I stole the Trade tech. *RESEARCHING TRADE* was a higher priority than getting weapons for repelling my weak but nasty ships. All it would take them was 2-3 turns of research into weapons, and a single armed defender on each planet. The planet defending bonus would preclude any attack until I had built a fleet, and they would have easily outproduced me with their 3 decent planets to my single decent planet.

The AI must be improved to consider whether they are at war and whether enemy ships are in striking distance to decide which goals are more important, longterm investment or shortterm survival.

I didn't think of that tactic, and unarmed ships is a valid parry, but there would be no need for more than one such ship in orbit

Without Orbit Fleet Command, only one ship can be destoried per attack. So park 10 "target" in orbit, it will take atlease 10 moves before enemy can send it the landing party. Thus, buy some time for the reinforce fleet to come rescue. This tactic is specially useful for protecting poor production planets in remote locations; it will take forever to produce a useful warship to protect it. empty hull is very cheap to built and maintenance free.

It's doing this in the final release of the patch as well. Even more fun, when I finally invaded the planet itself, I got Laser IV. A MUCH better weapon than the one I was using, that could have easily fended off my little peashooters, but one that never saw the light of day. Stupid. Just stupid.

Try a much higher level. atleast Tough+

The AI redesigns it's ships only once per year. Hopefully this will change in 1.2.