I thought i'd post the modding the ai comp in seperate post, cause i thought it was a topic that could use some discussion on its own. These are some other ideas i've had to improve the game. Some benefit greatly from modded community made ai personalities.

* Introducing a streetfighter / mortal combat style of tournament for single player and possibly co-op multiplayer?

 Basically like street fight/mortal kombat single player, face off against increasingly more challenging randomly chosen opponents or teams.

So you would be able to pre-make a team, which could be any combination of ai up to 5 people, or even just solo a charachter, and contest with that team all the way to the top of a 10-15 fight ladder.

You would get 2 continues/retries before you are knocked out.

The higher up you get, the more challenging/bonuses given to the opposition, including an outnumbering of the teams (i.e. 4v3 or 3v2 or 5v4) or advantages such as but not limited to faster flag capture and increased gold rates for the other team.

The ultimate challange would to be to try to play as 1 person for the whole tournament, imagine trying to win a 1v3 in the final match?

edit. this could also be used as a kind of co-op multiplayer match, with opposition ai advantaged much more depending on the skill levels of the players involvedinvolved.

*  Having a pre-pre game lobby, a la b.net. Automatically joined by people of very similar/good ping regions.

Allow people to see how many/who is online in their good ping region, will alow for a few things.

 You can organise a custom game/pantheon and know there will be people to populate it with good pings.

Can be integrated with future versions of impulse to allow chat and launching of games solely through the impulse medium.

*When clan/organised team matching is made, show how the values of rankings will differ.

This is hard to do without a pre-pregame lobby. 

Much like internet chess, allow for the instant challenge of team vs team, with information coming up which would show how the elo/style of rankings  would change. For example

(for the player/team)

Your team has been challenged by Team Stardock.

Rating for win +28

Rating for loss -15

Rating for Disconnect/Player dropped win +65

Rating for Disconnected/player dropped loss -5

rewarding people who stay in the game, even with an ai dropped.

* Having a simple shortcut key to bring up the citadel menu when away from the citadel, with the options greyed out and not able to be purchased.
Can't find it if there is one. Would help enormously in tactical planning away from the base.

* Have the ability in the options to turn on tezt updates when someone purchases something from the citadel.

Having played with players who have never known about citadel upgrades, a test coming up just for the allied team to say "kitch45 has purchased Currency 1" etc would be beneficial to both teach new guys what to buy, as well as being tactically informed.

 And thats all i have at the moment.

Any thoughts?