Believe me, it is in no way a cheat. The AI and other players have every advantage you have. I just sped up the building up part of the game. If your getting this for single player, the AI can and probably will murder you. The first time I tested it, three of the seven AI were only two planets away, each with like five caps per fleet. I hadn't even finished my researching yet. This was only about ten minutes into the game, and I was concentrating on maxing out my research and building multiple assault fleets. But really, it is a lot of fun, you get to kick butt faster than usual. Only thing is, I'm still having to work out the bugs. I keep getting minidumps and unusual errors. Apparently, you have to set some ships at normal cost. However, construction time doesn't appear to affect game performance. It just has to be set to one second or nothing will build. Go figure.