[Beck]

1. I'm not sure whether this really helps the AI make for a tougher game. The benefits to the AI of having lower overhead are offset by the flexibility that human players exhibit. It seems that editing the the computer empires would be more to the point and making sure that they have some of their racial points spent to lower maintenance.

7. This is not so much a bug but an inadvertent error. The "Combat To Hit Add" should have read "Combat To Hit Dec" with the values being negative to reflect being easier to hit and not harder as positive values would do. You'll find the same error occurs with baseships.

8. This will help, but I think the end result will still be a wide margin between human players and the AI. I also fear what affect it will have on the AI in the other areas you have addressed as it works down the list. Will this mean there will be one less planet creating resources? This may hurt more than the benefit you provide with the lower maintenance. The problem is more in the Default_AI_Settings file where the maximum research and intelligence point generation is set at 100000. I'm currently in a game in which I have 422K in research points while the nearest AI player has 75K. So if it caps out at 100K, it will be far behind. I'm looking at changing this by adding a zero. Further down the list from the setting you changed is a research planet which allowed for 50% of such colonies to be such worlds, so the change from 25% to 28% is going to have minimal or no overall effect.