This are some questions and suggestions mainly for Stardock and its excellent staff but feel free to add your own opinions.

While playing on a large map with seven other races at painful, being evil for the first time ever, i found myself in a relatively weak position. Somehow during the course of the game I had neglected to build manufacturing planets. The only one I had was my home world with two manufacturing bonuses (700% + 300%). All the other planets had given me a moral question that increased my research ability and, being evil, I went for the advantage.

Anyway, the Dominion of Korx is my neighbour and was beginning to opress my planets with a high influence. I figured what the heck and sent my sole Dreadnought to attack him as I was already loosing. Well as you can imagine it got toasted. But I redesigned and my one maunfacturing planed churned out a better Dreadnought in two turns. With my amazing research I went up a few levels in shield tech during that time. When that Dreadnougt was destroyed I redesigned and rebuilt, each time with the new tech.

Initially, with a single ship and then with a small fleet, I destroyed the most powerful military power in the galaxy. Why? Because I was able to redesign on a whim. I read somewhere that the AI only redesigns once a year. I can understand Brads point that it takes time for a CPU to redesign seven, eight, even nine AI's ships, more time that people are willing to give. What I was wondering was is if there was someway to distract the player, like you do with the moral question, and use that time to do those redesigns? One idea I had was when we are informed of galactic events like the wave of xenophobia sweeping across the galaxy, propose a governmental/political question that requires a player to read it for a few moments and choose a course of action that will affect his future. During this time the ships get the overhaul. How about the U.P. meetings. There is a good time because you have to read those proposals carefully!

Some other questions I had were: Do all of the AL ships get updated at the same time or at intervals throughout the year? Could they be updated bi or tri anually? Would a code that allows weapons/defenses/engines of the same size per hull to be swapped be less time consuming? Would a major once a year redesign with two of three size swap redesigns be an efficient use of time?

Anyway, these were some questions I had. I don't want to come across in a negative way because it it not ment to be negative. You have designed and amazing game but when you have been playing it until 5:30am and have been thinking about it all night and morning you have to ask somebody right!

Keep up the good work and thanks for being so devoted to the game.

Blessings on you.