Two friends and I played a multi-player game with 5 AI opponents.  The game played mostly smoothly.  But we had a few observations:

1) There's no default victory setting.  Its only after both my friends left the game that I got the victory screen (i then got a minidump and the game crashed).  We played as one team of 3 vs 5 AI.  The three of us had settled the entire map, the pirates were wiped out, and there were no remaining enemy ships.

2) Is Truce Amongst Rogues working as intended?

                *if this is researched early in the game (it only takes 3 civ labs), won't this keep you from colonizing neutral worlds?

                *If you are playing a co-op game and have this researched, you can not assist allies in fighting the pirates.

                *Players with T.A.R. researched will repair both pirate ships and allies if the ally doesn't have it researched and is fighting the pirates.  I could see them repairing pirate ships in an enemy gravity well, but not when fighting an ally.

3) AI players build way too many torpedo cruisers, LRMs and envoy ships.  Most fleets we encountered consisted only of torp cruisers and LRMs.  Enemy gravity wells would have 4 or 5 of their envoy ships just hanging out waiting for something to do.

4)With locked teams, why can I send pirates on missions against my allies?

did you research it completely? 

p.s. divs! is there any updates is to how the beta is going or a time line. or a release date for the final version of the game ... i really want to see the vasari and the advent....