Hi everyone. It's been about six weeks since our last news post, and we're well on our way into ALPHA 16. The focus on this update is improving AI in combat as well as fleshing out some of the AI capabilities. Over the last few weeks we've been working first on AI combat.
We've focused on AI targeting, they can now engage other AI ships/vessels that belong to factions they don't like. Targets can be dropped if they're hidden from sight, or get too far away. However, if you're the only other enemy in the area, you still unlikely to be ignored. Many AI ships can now engage in idle behaviors, where they will go on patrol around the area, looking out for enemies. We've also improved AI weapon useage and improved their behavior in attempting to get their weapons on target.
Another behavior we are planning to include in this update is for the possibility of AI fleeing (if they feel the battle is not in their best interest). In the future this will lay the ground for more sophisticated behavior like repairing or possibly even mining.
Once that is done, we'll be focusing on AI/player interaction. Now that the hailing system is in and working to our satisfaction, we'll be adding the capability for AI to hail you. This can be expected in situations where you are not wanted (like entering a hostile region) or a very friendly area.
Finally, we've got plans for actually distress calls. One where the AI may call in reinforcements if you can't disable them fast enough.
On the other side of things, we've taken the time to flesh out and polish a few features. When a hostile AI ship targets you, the navradar will now reflect that. We've also revisited the Manufacturing UI, and improved some elements, including queue flow and how enhancements are affecting your manufacturing.
We're still some weeks away from the full update release, but we're releasing a Pre-Release build today. The usual business applies--it's optional etc, but please give it a try and let us know what you think of the changed AI behavior. We'll do atleast one more Pre-Release, and possibly more as things get nailed down.
Head over to the changelog to see whats in the Update so far.
To try the Pre-Release out, follow these instructions