People have been talking about  A.I
i would like to see the A.I do some human like "dirty Tricks"

such as building a fleet of small ships paradeing it infront of the player by wandering about scouting etc saying "OOoo look at me i am missiles and chaff build" already having a larger fleet of beams and shields, way at the back out of the players range, so when the player builds beams and chaff to "defeat it" it comes along with its prepared fleet and pounds the players forces into dust.
Building a fleet of say 6-8 FAST ships with engines,sensors, life support with minimal weaponry and deliberatly avoiding the combat ships zooming deep into enemy territory and suddenly scattering and causing havoc in the back by taking out all those juicy undefended transports, constructors and shipyards, being clever enough to stay out of the move range of combat ships and being a right pain in the butt.
Building Cloaked minelayer ships and creeping them into player territory, and laying mines everywhere. (assuming we get cloaking and minelayers)
build sensor scattering modules (effectivly reducing the sensors of other races back to nearly nothing) on there borders.and putting the same anti sensor module on merchant freighters so as the ship "trades" with the player it drags a huge fog of war area with it. send them to a variety of planets to blind against the incomming invasion.
send constructor or two to build "pirate bases" a pirate base would be a cross between a starbase and a ship yard, but invisible on main map as its "hidden" (think star wars rebel base, or freelancer hidden pirates bases in asteroids and nebula) its "income" would be based on what it was built near and would be restricted to building tiny and small vessels only with low tech. as they are "pirates and not affiliated with any race you have no idea who sent them or if they are actual real pirates from the randomly generated  universe. but they will send ships to destroy lone targets etc.
Have a few "brick ships" in the front ranks with nothing but a tiny poxy gun and LOADS of defence so that enemy ships in auto combat are so busy blasting away at a brick the other ships fire at longer range and take out the lot. (not tried this yet).

Well these are just a few ideas off the top of my head  for players and A.I alike.why not suggest a few more