Killing Dreadnaughts without Loss

I think the AI targeting of ships and fleets ought to be one turn's movement. If it can't reach the target in one turn then it shouldn't target it because it's likely to move. Colonies that don't move could be targeted multiple systems away. What I'd like to see is an AI fleet work it's way through a system in one fell swoop, not trash a colony and then go to some other system before finishing the job.

The AI also needs to do a better job of recon by making recon frigates to snoop out the enemy positions. Once it finds a good system to attack then send out the fleet to destroy the colonies. Easier to have an AI target colonies and force the human to defend them with his fleets than try to attack the fleets while leaving the colonies alone.

Ships are not chosen randomly for scrapping due to lack of resources. I have seen enough examples to see that Dreadnaughts get trashed before Carriers. I never saw a Carrier get trashed due to lack of resources until they were the only ships left.
Omnius

Captain Kwok,
For the Quadrant level the AI should never, ever target a fleet or ship more than one turn's movement because ships and fleets move and even in simultaneous movement there's very little chance of those ships or fleets meeting and greeting during movement. What's needed in simultaneous movement is to target a ship or fleet and as it moves the target location gets updated and the attacking ship or fleet alters it's movement to intercept the moving ship or fleet. What would be totally awesome would be WEGO movement instead of the boring IGO-UGO movement currently used.

Yep in battle mode I think proximity is undervalued. Makes fighters more powerful than they should be if they're never targeted. I'm looking at the Rules of Engagement next to see if I can make that work better for me so my ships shoot at the closest and possibly the smallest first. One snafu I noticed in the current default targeting is that colony ships will turn and fight when fighters are launched when they normally always run for the border.

The other problem with the current RoE is that a lone ship will make a suicide run against a whole fleet if it isn't set to "don't get hurt". It's really stupid to watch a lone ship go down in suicidal flames against a huge fleet when in reality it would run like a bat out of heck.

Scrapping due to resource shortage must be based upon build cost or maintenance cost. I'll have to sneak a look at an AI and see what the costs are for it's ships so I get a better idea of why it scraps Dreanaughts before Heavy Carriers. But I watched this happen enough to see a bad pattern that needs to be fixed so that Heavy carriers get scrapped before a useful Dreanaught, especially if the HC is empty.
Omnius