I need to rework the ship generation (a bit). Basically, I am right now generating a bunch of ships, which each exists in some place in the universe (i.e., they are an NPC). As well, the player can pilot one of those ships. What I need to do is rework it so that the NPC layer sits on top of that, drawing from those ships. That is, I first create the ships, then I create some "ship npcs" which reference those created ships. The ships that I create fall into the three main category (science, fighter, cargo) and the ship NPCs fall into the same categories as before (cruiser, pirate, police, trader, etc...)
@p
Last night I spent some time tightening up the cruiser drones, that is the AI for cruiser type ships. Mainly what has been fixed is the insystem/outsystem behaviour, which is a good thing. It's a lot easier to get close to one of the ships, not hard at all actually, and when you shoot them they hail you, telling you stand down, and then eventually flee the system.
2004-05-08