... and this is about the AI. I have played many hours EFS, but it was obvious the AI could not invade new planets, except if by pure random luck of moving some units at the right place at the same moment basically. It happened, but it always felt like a combination of 'lucky moves'.

So, have you witnessed an actual and serious AI invasion of a planet?

They do.

As an example, in my last game, I saw Hazat on Vera Cruz, taking over stuff. Since it's not their home planet then yeah, they defo to take over other planets, absolutely.

They do pretty well, actually. I usually see the map start changing colors around 20 turns in or so. By the time a typical game has run its course they'll often have a good four or five fully subdued worlds each to their names.

Marvelous news and I congratulate the dev team for that, thanks guys!