So far NPC AI is able to select a players ship based on mission settings, mission AI always attack the mission runner and standings. When the AI attack, the attack is pretty start forward. The AI will make a bee-line to ship to get within optimal damage range and will attack a random ship that satisfies the yes / no of the script of the ship being within targeting range.
AI Upgrades would include:
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Random ships from an NPC fleet following an NPC ship that has yellow boxed a players ship. Such interaction would even see Invasion ships being followed by NPC belt rats for example. The Trigs warp off to chase down Edencom or to another station and the Belt NPC’s follow.
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Manuevering - based on a random roll, an NPC ship could suddenly decide to evade pursuit by orbiting the players ship well out of its own dps range but not targeting range. While evading, the NPC could “pick up” other ships using tactic number 1. The other ships would then follow the evading NPC ship back to within the optimal range of the lead evading ship.
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Spread Fire - spread fire would work how it currently does with Triglavian and Incursion ships. After a while the ships simply shift focus. Instead, some of the NPC ships, rolling the die of 1 and 2 would, suddenly take off and orbit other player ships and attack them.
Take for example Zorya fleets. We have all seen them warp in on target and then MJD away in a starburst formation. When the Zorya fleets warps out in such a manner, other Trigs would warp to the new warp point, away from players and Endencom ships in an attempt to draw them away from the safety of their fleets. Based on standings, a Trig fleet could warp to a Kyber ally who is on grid.
Edencom ships would use the script but instead the script would be reversed.
So in theory a fleet of 20 Trigs could suddenly break up into smaller groups and attack mutiple ships at once instead of just one player ship or fly out 250 km away to pull some of the player ships with them. As the current AI is now, the NPC vs Player is too predictable and does not create emergent game play.