When engaging a Tinker fleet composed of 3-4 Dreadnoughts and 4 scouts, I was quite surprised to find that the seemingly weak scouts packed Pulse Generators!

Have to say this was a nice surprise as it did effect the tactics of the battle quite a bit

The question of course is why the tech came from: my money is on one of their fleets raiding a system with a Steward in it, as I was looking for Focus lenses upgrades (a cheap early tech that can be bought from the Herald) on AI ships afterwards but could not find any on the map

Most likely the AI looted the tech from a Steward that it destroyed.

Arioch wrote:Most likely the AI looted the tech from a Steward that it destroyed.

That is great

So the AI can already research additional tech. Will it buy the tech from the Herald?
On one hand, I would prefer that for leveling the field with the player, but it would also make these tech less "special"

zolobolo wrote:So the AI can already research additional tech. Will it buy the tech from the Herald?

Not as far as I'm aware.