I know this has been brought up before, but I think it should be brought up more often: Ships should be gifted to a race that receives a surrender.
I just finished a game on Painful (Gigantic, 10 starting civs). I got the computer players down to their last alliance, the Terran-Arcean-Altarian Alliance (amusingly enough), and I was by far the most powerful civ. The thing is, most of my military was on one far side of the map dealing with some Altarians. I thought my homeworld cluster was well-defended, but boy was I wrong. As a small fleet (5 dreadnoughts and 16 troop transports) of my best ships passed by Arcean space during my war with the Terrans, the Arceans launched a surprise rear attack. My homeworld defenses weren't as good as I thought, and they laid my space bare (except for constructors and freighters). I got their transports before I went down, so my planets were okay, but I couldn't mount a resistance and my constructors could see transports coming from an Altarian outpost nearby.
So, basically, I was about to lose a quarter of my worlds--the best ones, at that--and there wasn't much I could do about it. Some minors (
Paulos) were keeping the Terrans from overwhelming me, so I made a last-ditch attack on the Arcean worlds with my small fleet. I was doing pretty good until I got to their last four worlds, all of which were heavily defended (4+ ships with 750 or more attack each and Aeron Systems to guard against my missiles) and had at least 15 billion soldiers. And I only had three transports left.
But OOPS! 4 worlds isn't an empire, says Mr. Computer! The Arceans surrendered to the Terrans, as the Terrans were actually quite powerful, which made the Arcean armada, with its tens of thousands of attack points and absolute space superiority, go 'splode for no reason whatsoever. So my 3.5 remaining dreadnoughts rushed through my (now safe) influence bubble to intercept the Altarian transports while my two dozen constructors upgraded into transports, grabbed some troops from the nearest worlds, and bombarded the hell out of the now defenseless ex-Arcean planets.
Though it was nice to have such a sudden mercy from the game, it still struck me as
really lame.