They could either

1.putting support modules on thei ships
2.reasearched life support techs
3.teleport there when they explore an warmhole anomaly

if they do it lategame only explanation is 2 i never noticed hey cheated with life support but then again i canb only play at huge and with no more than 2-3 civs ...

feh! Life support is for wimpy races! Build starbases to extend your range!

that's probably what the AIs are doing to reach that far, my opponents do it extensively.

You can 'cheat' the Life Support System yourself, actually Here is what you do:

1.) Colonize a planet or build a starbase as your starting point.

2.) Colonize another planet or build another starbase such that there is a gap in their support ranges (at least a gap for the ships you want to cheat with).

3.) Now, simply task your fleet in one sphere of support to go into another sphere of support, and they will go there, ignoring any support range limits (although they probably won't be able to attack or colonize)!

Basically, ships can only be tasked to move into an area supported by a colonized planet or starbase; the space between them is irrelevant in the calculations This can be very exploitable, if you send a very supportive constructor out across to the other side of the map and build a starbase near the enemy and then just send all of your ships there. Ships will also keep going towards their assigned target (and complete the task, like establishing a trade route or invading a planet, if they are tasked to the exact location of the planet) even if the planet or starbase that was extending the support sphere is lost.

Should've mentioned a bit more, I was at 'Advanced' spying, and I could see that the ships didn't have any life support systems, and could see they didn't have the techs, I checked, since it seemed odd they were so far away from their system, they controlled no planets, resources, or anything on my side of the map. The UP hadn't created the law that makes Starbases assist allies, and even if they had no one had allied yet by this point in the game. I also highly doubt it was a wormhole, since it wasn't just one ship, it was entire squadrons of light and heavy fighters, among other things, since they were with someone on my side of the map.

On most maps the AI's use too much life support modules. imo gigantic maps are probably the only maps that the AI should be adding range modules on there attack ships, non combats are fine as long as there not over doing it which i feel they currently are.

Ultimately the AI should be adaptive to what map it plays on as to when adding range modules is concerned. I think the AI in 1.1 has made attack ships to a very high standard but non combats need much more speed less range imo.


Lenius.