The AI starts with 500 extra science on normal, but that's it. Any odd jumps you are seeing are likely the result of captured ships or some other way of gaining tech.

Hard and Brutal give the AI enormous bonuses to resource production and make researching techs/constructing ships cheaper as well ...

well, one element of most 4x games (including sis) that forces expansion is the technological virtuous circle. Scientific progress increases your efficiency; higher efficiency increases your science production and increases your ability to expand; thus a larger empire will find it easier to produce ...

Try playing on a smaller map to reduce micro issues.

having a bigger crew is highly important for boarding actions. The best boarding ship is virtually always your largest available ship, ideally equipped with a marine quarters. Destroyers are the worst possible candidates to board with. Boarding with a smaller vessel will always incur ...

There is one major flaw in sticking to laser techs - interceptors and strikefighters scale with your best researched weapon, and rapidfire/xray mods don't help.

Congratulations

on this topic, there are some techs that give a bonus to 'infantry' - i assume that means colonists, marines, and raiders. It might be more clear to reword it specifically as providing a bonus to militia, marines, and raiders.

also unclear is how ground strength equates to boarding strength

The unfinished stuff does need to be polished off, but the small craft overhaul can probably be pushed in terms of priorities. Worst case for events, they're turned off at release.

But perhaps my standards are low, owing to SOTSII-related trauma.

Now that you mention it, I have noticed orbital bombing acting oddly. It seems to be fairly all or nothing. Every attack in a turn seems to target the same thing; for example, if the first attack hits an installation, the subsequent attacks tend to also hit installations.

I have tested antimissiles a couple times recently but they seem far worse in practice than they are on paper. I am not sure what's wrong with them. They do less damage than i expected against ships and arn't particularly capable against missiles.

Put a pop on the planet you don't care about, then starve the planet to death :^)

Wait, so bombers scale with missile warhead tech...?

That seems a little weird given that they are the two different kinds of ordnance.

EDIT:

Okay, thought about my initial reaction a little. If bombers do the damage of (highest tech missile weapon), they're indistinguishable from reuseable ...

I should note this was on the steam version. I plum forgot the beta updates were being run through the updater and not steam.

Steam version:

The unhappiness effect for 'Planet destroyed by x faction' displays the wrong planet in its additional text, i.e.:

after the planet Toliman I is destroyed by bombing, looking at a population on Farin II displays:

-10 :( : Toliman I Destroyed
Farin II was destroyed by the Yoral ...

Had a lot of time on ferry rides and other downtimes this thanksgiving, and SiS was a good candidate for laptop game :^)

TECH
- Advanced Turbolasers has Rapid Fire Lasers as a requirement, which is already a requirement for Turbolasers.
- Hovertanks require shielding technology, which puts a lot ...