Programming NPC AI is rewarding once you get into it; you never get tired of losing your own creation. On the downside, developing and testing requires lots of hard debugging as well as complicated play/cheat modes that take time to set up. Therefore I usually concentrate on AI for longer periods at once. Such as the last two weeks.
In addition to countless tweaks and fixes, there are several new features and improvements. AI players...
- are more consistent when estimating enemies strengths and weaknesses.
- are better at keeping safe distance to ships with more close-combat power.
- can target vulnerable ships from a greater distance, not necessarily concentrate on the closest one anymore.
- are able to detect if their cockpit is exposed to enemies. If so, they try to turn around to cover it.
- dodge teammates better and can coordinate targets during the team play.
- don’t waste their most precious weapons on harmless targets during tournaments (assuming they can move or enemies are within the reach of their cannons).
- are aware when they’re surrounded by enemies, and will escape the situation accordingly. This will take some refining, since there’s a danger that they get too careful and waste all the time escaping.
- perform silly things due to numerous bugs. So nothing new there.
All AI skills and characteristics are configurable. According to my plans, the next version introduces nine opponents in three different tiers, each having their own personal fighting style. I still need a set of portraits, new player selection GUI and all kinds of visual things that are not my strength. Slowly but steadily...