I just bought GalCiv 3 when it went to half price, loving it so far.
I played Galciv2 for many many hours, and 3 is looking great!
However, I was surprised to see that I can still easily make a 'Sensor Ship', literally just placing as many sensors as I can - no engines or weapons or anything else.
After making just a handful fairly early on (before any wars are even close to starting) I have full sensor coverage of pretty much everything I need to see, making the need for sensors on other ships or developing sensor tech completely redundant.
It still feels like an exploit to me (albeit one I've always used).
With the AI able to soon adapt and learn from players ships, will this mean they will start building these OP ships too? At least as a player I'll know to take them out, but AI's probably won't realise how valuable they are anyway.
I was thinking that each sensor part you place should increase the weight / cost of the next sensor part, so putting a lot of sensor parts on a ship should make it very costly to build matching the usefulness of it.