@Gothars: I agree, it's odd. [REDACTED] in a fleet should cause, at the very least, inspections. One would think that having such things implies that one's been into forbidden areas, doing forbidden things, and should generate a pretty strong negative response from Hegemony and Luddite fleets, as well as driving Pathers crazy. Moreover, inspections that find AI in charge of these ships should cause pretty major diplomatic difficulties. If I'm understanding correctly, some new penalty's been introduced making AI ships less affordable when given AI for balance reasons? That seems like the wrong way to handle this. The problem with having [REDACTED] in your fleets should be that most Factions react badly to this, for obvious reasons, starting with, "you've freed them to continue their mission".
On Derelicts: IMO, they should be the shieldless armor-tank ships you want to use as meat-shields. As it stands, a lot of them are neither fish nor fowl; fairly weak with shields, weak without them. The only ones getting much praise are disposable missile carriers, and frankly every time I read that that meta remains the most-viable option, I cringe; it's Carrier spam all over again, taking away player-centric combat. I presume that's what players are finding Fun, but I don't like that much.
At any rate, to get to the point where they'd be generally useful, they'd need considerably more armor, so that the bigger ones can shrug off some serious hits. Perhaps they need extra-special auto-repair systems, so that they're really, really hard to stun-lock. I think making them the missile platform of choice is a mistake, though; they should be ships you plan to dump into the enemy's center of mass while you sneak more fragile direct-damage player-ships onto flanks, etc.
