Hi. Nice to see someone who play STARS! too.
The reason why you have those "random occurrences" is indeed because of the cheat protection. It is actually called "the Emperor Bug" and is triggered by the fact that you produce those two players turns on the same computer. STARS! is able to make the difference between two different computers and if it realize that two players have the same "signature" then the Emperor Bug is triggered.
This is of course to prevent a single player controlling several races in the same (multiplayer) game.
