OK. There's not jumping to conclusions, there's not knowing the whole picture (yes, whatever code SJA was working on may not have played nicely with other code, had some killer bug, or couldn't be made to fit in time for 1.4 and needed to be postponed for the big gamescon thing - we just don't know), but better AI and variety of AI skill ranks was one of the things I, (and a lot of other people I believe) were looking forward to. She was also the one person who seemed fairly free and enthusiastic in talking about what she was up to as well.
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This isn't an issue as big as 'offline' gate, but Frontier really do seem to take a couple of steps forward (appointing Zac, Sandro and Michael talking about the background sim), then jump further back and blow their leg off with a shotgun, community relations wise.
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I humbly ask for a clear statement as to whether the AI improvements are still coming? [yeah ... like that will work...

]
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Meh... that's actually put me off playing for the rest of the evening.