FreeOrion

I've tried several builds in the last few months and I like the way the game is set up.

I noticed in this build that AI is not building ship, and probably only colonizes with it's initial colony ships. I'm looking forward to the builds in which the AI becames active. I rarely have time to do multi player games, so I usually play against AI. Since I'm not able to play MOOII on win 7, I hope this game becames a good substitude for it.

I noticed a few odd things and possible bugs, so I decided to post them in here.

Possible bugs:
1) When you drag one of more ships from a fleet to the "New Fleet" icon, the game crashes. I tried it multiple times, it crashes each time.
If you split the fleet first, and then create the fleets you want, it works fine. However, when fleets get larger this is a very laborious action: you have to find and drag all the ships to the new fleets.
So if I only want to take out a few ships from a current fleet and create a new fleet, I would really want to be able to use the "new fleet" option.

Odd things (possibe bugs)
1) When I started the game, all the fighter ships (mark I to IV) immediately were labelled with a red X (as if it was an obsolete design).
Furthermore, the basic medium hull option was missing. This might be the cause of things. (Several turns later, the basic medium hull option reappeared, so I could create new ship designs with it. When I did, there was no longer a red cross when I created them).
As I was still able to build the ships, I did not really bother to report it.

2) I'm not able to colonize worlds with the "Solid Core" special, not with a colony ship nor with an outpost ship. Maybe this was intended.

3) I have not been able to invade home worlds of AI races. Even though I have a large fleet present and lots of troop ships. The invade option simply does not appear. Also, the planet picture is also "faded" with horizontal black lines. Maybe this was intended.
I have only found one colony created by an AI race: I have been able to invade this world succesfully, so the invade option is working.
For the record, when I tried to invade AI home worlds, a battle occurs each round my fleet is present in that system. But I haven't been able to notice any results.

4) When building one 'terraforming' building, it does not necessarily improve the environment by one step to the preferred environment (as suggested by the research description of both 'Terraforming' and of the building 'Terraforming'). In reality it takes about 3 terraforming buildings for 2 steps. This also varies (as far as I can see it is dependend on planet size).

5) Another odd thing was that I was not able to use 'Terraforming' on a hostile planet environment. It stated that the population requirement was not met. After I researched 'Xenological Hybridization' I was able to terraform these worlds. (I'm playing Terran, so in this case it were barren and radiated worlds that I tried to terraform.)

Interface
1) When you select the production tab, you see the production of all planets, not only of the planet that you currently select. When the number of planets increases, there are so many items in queue that you loose overview. Some kind of selection would be a nice feature. For example: 'building queue of selected planet', 'ship only' , 'buildings only', etc.

I'm only in turn 65, so I might come across more issues, or possible solutions to the odd things described above.

5) is intended, AFAIK.
Number 1) in odd things is known for some time, and I don't know why it wasn't yet fixed.

ETA: You make a good point when it comes to the production tab.

FO is undergoing a massive revamp right now and many aspects of the game has been changed or will be changed. This is why the AI is passive - the new stuff hasn't been implemented to the AI yet.
I've had this problem too ever since I started with FO, but it hasn't been a major setback in FO's development so far. I think it will be a while before this gets fixed.
The Mark series pre-designs originally had a unique icon that later got removed. The red X is a temporary substitute. The medium hull shouldn't be missing though. I've never had this happen to me yet.
The special lowers the max population as of this SVN. Try researching some techs that boost population or colonize that planet with a phototrophic species (such as laenfa).
This has something to do with the stealth of the planet. Enemy homeworlds also give a massive stealth boost to their ships, which is why you can't really tell what's going on. Maybe it's something the programmers added in for this SVN to give the AI some ability to resist capture. If you check out your homeworld's stealth stat occasionally, you'll see that it's off the charts (along the lines of 1k+). Pretty much the only thing you can do is to research sensors and try to decrease the stealth of the planet you're trying to invade somehow.
Unless terraforming has been changed, this should be right: Most species have 4 hostile planet environments. For example, barren, radiated, inferno, and toxic are all hostile to humans. In this case, radiated and inferno are "extra hostile". Say you terraformed a radiated planet, it will turn into a barren one, but barren is still hostile. Check this out. It should help: http://www.freeorion.org/index.php/File:EP_wheel.png
Terraforming only works on planets with a max population of at least 1. If you want to terraform planets with a max population of less than 1, you'll need to research remote terraforming and use that instead.

I agree with you and Zireael about the production tab thing.

Actually the new stuff has broken the AI code, as it hasn't been updated since the removal of the food resource. Hence, the food resource is still referenced in the AI code, causing an exception (which can be seen in the AI log files). Which means the AI is pretty much non functional ATM (until someone is going to fix that).

I can't reproduce this. The new fleet box works fine for me. If that's the case for Geoff as well, that's probably why it hasn't been fixed.

Again, I haven't been able to reproduce this. It's possibly some testing or example script that got left in by accident somewhere, so I suppose I'll just play a test game and see if it comes up.

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Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

Thanks for all the support and suggestions.

I've been trying out the detection thing in order to invade AI home worlds. After discovering all techs, the best detection ship had a detection lvl of 775. This was not enough to beat the stealth of 900+ of AI homeworlds. Even though I made an interstellar lighthouse in the same system.
Either the light house has no effect, or it does not stack with detection of ships.

btw, I managed to build colonies on worlds with 'solid core' special later on in the game.

I've seen a few odd things. I've made a few screen shots that I will post later this week or next week.

What does the tooltip breakdown say about the cause of the stealth on the AI homeworlds?

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Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.