It's a virtuous thing you do, I have no issue with it unless like in other threads you begin mocking people who prefer single player.

However you aren't fighting a fear of playing other people you are fighting the fact that single player RTS is a completely different game to multiplayer RTS, ie multiplayer RTS is shit (imo), and yes, I have tried it.

But of course you know this, as I have explianed to you before, and exactly as many other people have explained to you.  Maybe you will stop acting like we are afraid of getting beaten and just trying to get people to try multiplayer to see if it is something they would enjoy.  But not in this thread, I think you've derailed it enough.

The AI needs only a few fixes.

It needs to help its teammates more, not run away from anything it could even win i.e. from its own fortified(!) positions, do a bit more and logical research paths, upgrade starbases and caps properly. It shouldn't do useless things like building starbases right inside your fleet, scouting with carriers or zerging the same planet with the same fleet composition over and over and over again.

As a newbie who hasn't played the game a ton of times, I've been thus far impressed with the AI.  Or, at least, I can say that I've had quite a few "wow" moments saying to myself "wow, I didn't expect the AI to do that!"  For me, it's been some simple things, like watching the AI retreat from a battle when it starts losing, or being unexpectedly blindsided by a flank attack by them.  I'm trying a 3-teams-of-two solo game now and have been impressed with my partner calling for help, or coming to my own aid.

As I said, it may not be the best, but it has surprised me a number of times compared to AI's I've come across in other games.  that alone has impressed me and kept me on my toes.

Problem is, I want to play the game on my schedule. If I want to fire up a game at 9pm and only play for 30 minutes, I want to do that.  If I spend a whole Saturday on a game, I want to be able to do that.  If I want to spend a leisurely game rather than counter flavor_of_the_month_strategy ad nauseum, I wanna do that to.

Can't do those in online multiplayer.

Don't get me wrong, I like MP and will rarely if ever buy a SP game, but I only play MP with my friends.. and typically on a LAN.  Especially RTS games, I just hate cheese and RTS games are notorious for them (Sins much, much, much less than standard RTSes, of course).

Exactly. In addition, I want to pause to get some coffee or have my supper. I want to modify the game to make it more interesting to me. None of that you can do in multiplayer, so it's the AI for me.

I just wish it were a little smarter.

at the very least they could bring in a new difficulty setting, something with even more cheatage for the ai

at the most, i would like to see allied ai work together, they seem to have a system set up for making the ai decide when to jump into a system or not, when to flee when to stand, why not make them decide based on their friends nearby too?