Selling specific ships Idea

You can skip a step there by just looking for one of their planets and clicking the 'speak to' button. And rename your ship someing begining with A so it is at the top of your ship list.

Yeah, I've suggested things like a "mark for trading" option. I don't know whether or not there's the slightest chance anything like that will get in.

Otherwise, Darkrenown's suggestion makes sense -- rename it (by clicking the ship's name in the status bar) to something distinctive the Gift Ship.

Incidentally, it would seem reasonable for an AI to get irritated with you if you're giving arms to its enemy within its sensor range.

I always rename the ships I'm trading/selling off. Makes it easy to find them in my list of ships.

"Incidentally, it would seem reasonable for an AI to get irritated with you if you're giving arms to its enemy within its sensor range."

Would be a great thing to be implemented.

At least at anything at, say, Normal or above.

"La la la, I'm neutral in this war, don't mind me parking right next to your most critical starbase or my radioing the Constructor ship to get ready..."

"...OK boys, strike the colors, haul up the new ones, and fire away!"

If this were a multiplayer game, this would be even more abuseable vs. an oblivious AI (one player feigns neutrality to get the ships into position, the second uses 'em to blast targets and gives 'em back) but it's already abuseable to a certain degree in single-player mode as well.

*lol* Creative arms dealing for fun and profit...

Another in a number of cheeses (or so they appear to me) for grabbing resources without going to war.

My count so far:
-Before it's harvested, put 8 ships around it and physically prevent enemy constructor access.
-If they already have the base, buy it for a really good tech and 50-100bcs a turn for 100 turns (possibly a shorter term, I haven't closely examined the threshold). One might not consider this a cheese, since you're paying so much, but you can essentially buy victory in many cases simply by buying up all the influence resources, pumping them up, and watching the galaxy flip to you.
-If they have the base and are at war with someone, park a dread or something and a constructor next to the base and give/sell the warship to the race they're at war with, hope it blows the base up, and snag the resource with the constructor. (alternatively, use the ship and/or something else as a bargaining chip to get someone to go to war with the target race)

It's nice to have these options in some cases, particularly when the map generator displays its hatred for you by placing all the influence resources in someone else's territory, essentially dooming you unless you snag some of them through war or cheese... but is it really intended that we should be able to buy, for anything short of like 10 star systems, a resource critical to the success of the AI? Then there's the selling-the-convieniently-placed-dreadnaught ploy, but I don't know what can really be done about that other than the relations hit suggested above (which might be difficult to implement).

Ah well, it's not a problem to be able to do these things (pretty fun actually, and the methods aren't foolproof), just wondering whether people think it should be this way.

I Play in the normal size map so I don't park a constructor mext to the base I give the ship away and see what happens, when or if the starbase is destroyed I purchase a constructor at the nearest planet and then I grab the resource. (hate cheeze).

that would work against a human, if he was at war with that race. I never destroy built up starbases, but if I see a resource free up, I grab it. There are just times to sell specific ships, if you have 100 its painful.
[Message Edited]

On second thought, When the AI sells a ship to an AI does the human hear about it? I am not sure.

Like Star Pilot said, I rename the ship I want to sell "gift" before going to the trade screen. This also moves it to the top of my ship list, because the list is sorted by name.

"On second thought, When the AI sells a ship to an AI does the human hear about it? I am not sure."

If the AI will be improved to react to ships sold/given away in it's sensor range, a notification for the player in such cases should also be applied (next to a change in the relation) - IMO.