This is something veteran players have been taking advantage of since DL.

It's not -as- big of an issue as it otherwise might be, as in DA and TA you have to wait 8 turns between talking to a civ, or 4 if you're the Terrans/Super Diplomat, but it might be something worth looking into anyway.

You are correct that it values them based largely on population, though-you'll notice if you try this against the Torians (DA/TA) it's somewhat more difficult and more expensive.

This may have already been posted, but I've noticed that the Military Starbase Improvement "Protection Fields" and possibly some of the other ship enhancing starbase improvements do not appear to be working.

The yor diplomacy screen still has this one oh-so-annoying white frame if you are at some levels of relations with them.  My only other (admittedly minor) gripe is that you recieve word when races you haven't made first contact with build a wonder.  I've played through a few games and haven't had any crashes or bugs materially affecting the game yet.  I'd agree with previous posters that the AI is probably a little too willing to sell a PQ 29 planet with 250 million people.  Thier prices probably make sense for PQ 6 planets, but there's something funny about the AI being willing to part with the high PQ planets but not their junk starbases.

Ok, I had to open my big fat mouth.  Right after I posted that I had the Altarians surrender to me and the game completely flipped out.  I now have a few ships with 0 move, 0/0 hp, no thumbnails, and I seem to have gone to 0 logistics.  Additionally, all my racial abilities went to zero so all my planets are unhappy and more than a few are losing money. 

Not a bug.  You just got hit by the disease mega event.  Reduces all your abilities to zero-your planets are unhappy because your morale's zero, and you're losing money because you can't afford to tax them that high anymore, as well as not having your economic bonuses anymore, either.

Research disease cure in the tech tree (doesn't show up until the event happens, and even then in TA you need to go delve into the structure of the tree under xeno biology to find it) and it'll fix most, if not all, of your problems.  Someone reported not having fleets still after curing the disease, but I think that was a fluke.

Additionally, I'm not 100% sure it's disease, it may be plague, as I always get those two confused, but the same advice applies and in any case you should only be seeing one of them available in your tech tree anyway.

Oh right, the disease!  I did get that, I just didn't realize it affected logistics and the like.   Well, those invisible ships are still an issue, unless opacity is one of the stats affected by the disease .  That does mean that a lot less was malfunctioning than I thought it was though.  Thanks for pointing that out.

I think the dread lords event should adjust to the tecnologic rate you chosen... 

playing on huge, with slow tech rate they apeared when the most advanced civ (the computer humans, that were far alway in tech from every other including me), were fighting with small ships yet, my most powerful gun was a tier 3 shot gun, i got a good defense agaisn missile as i was fighting the terrans, but well for their atack it was ridiculous.  no need  to say that it was impossible to even damage them, as the square root of their shild defense was more than enoth to defend all damage from the greater fleet with the better wepons that anyone could create. giving my miniaturization level i could get 2 guns on my tiny ships, for a 4 atack ship....

 This need to be fixed,  i think the dread lord event should have the chance to fire only when the "media" (dont know how to say in english)  of civ tecnology gets to some level. (unless it is intended to be a game over event )

They're called MEGA EVENTS.  You can disable them.

If anything, the Dread Lords are -still- pushovers.  They start out with one ship, if that, and all you have to do is sneak a transport past it.

I wound up fighting the dread lords in a medium galaxy when I still had 2 firepower ships and very slow technology.  I was able to contain them to their planet for some time while I researched up the tech tree, but they finally stole Drengia from me (I conquered the Drengin shortly before they arrived).  By having some extra transports around, I was able to take it right back.  This went back and forth a few times, which quickly gave me the black hole guns tech I needed to make a few ships capable of punching through to their homeworld and conquering it.  The dreadlords simply don't represent much of a game ending threat unless they manage to take several planets; they are slow to produce ships and their invasion capabilities are just slightly above average. 

I got this wierd bug were I zoomed in on part of the map and saw all my enemies astroid bases even though they were all the way across the map. I've also had situations when I claim a resource but my starbases doesn't appear on it.

To follow up, it now appears the improvements do work in combat but their effects do not show up when merely clicking on my ships posted within the military starbase's sphere of influence.  The latter effect is something I believe used to work, i.e., that when you clicked on a ship or fleet stationed within the sphere of influence of a military starbase with the "protection field" improvement, you would see that ship's or fleet's defenses adjusted accordingly in the stats.  Right now, my ships still show zero defense when I merely click on them outside of combat but on the combat screen it appears the "protection field" enhancment is being applied.

As far as I recall, you need at least one defensive module on a ship in order for the defensive bonuses to be shown outside of combat.  Whether this is because the bonuses only apply to ships which have defensive modules, or that there's simply a bug in the interface, I don't know.

I'm not infallible, but I believe I recall that the protection field's effect appeared in the ship's stats in previous versions of the game.

I don't pretend to know how the surrender mechanism algorithm works or could be adjusted, but I believe it does need adjustment.  As one glaring example, the pirate mega event will frequently trigger mass surrenders despite the fact that the pirates cannot invade planets, and thus could never threaten the computer empire with actual conquest.  Given that every other player in the game is in the same boat (i.e., no military to speak of after decimation by the technolgically superior pirates), the AI is surrendering with no good reason and under circumstances where it could eventually pull its way through.  I know that the "surrender" feature can be turned off, but think that is an extreme response to something that (hopefully) could be tweaked just a bit to make it function "better." (By the way, if it helps, this is example on "Crippling" difficulty in an immense galaxy with rare habitable planets and rare stars.)

Appears fine in TA for me, 1.99rc.