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[StahnAileron]

I would settle for being able to save and load fleet configurations (using either a 'warning X missing' or best-fit substitution system) since right now dismantling and reconstituting fleets is so laborious. Why drag every ship you might need around with you when you could quickly swap your Bounty fleet for your Smuggling fleet?

I can think of a whole mess of options involving player-owned AI fleets; command-shuttling between fleets, ordering fleets to follow your fleet or follow a target fleet (also; it would be nice to have a command to match speed with a fleet to shadow it), splitting fleets, etc. that may or may not be viable for the existing game. All of that crap would be nice to have, any of it might reasonably be too much work or not fun. On an abstract level, I'd love to have AI fleets to perform some tedious tasks for me (like retrieving weapons or cargo from storage and bringing them to me, or to a nearby port where I have storage space, or guarding my base of operations), but heavy fighting is too much fun to let the AI do for me.

I agree with having AI fleets for tedious, menial tasks.

I played X3R with XTM significantly (X3T/AP changed enough that I couldn't adjust readily after months of X3R/XTM). I love the principle idea behind the game, but yeah, the execution needed work for anything beyond player-controlled combat. (Why I needed to connect dozen of independent space factories with tubes instead of using a single unified super-station and adding functionality to it I'll never know.) StarSectr is abstracted enough (and not confined to a first-person action viewpoint) that the interface would allow the type of things X does (or attempts... Seriously, X's UI was the bane of anything management-related.)

Splitting/recalling vessels, dumping loot, supply runs, simple trade routes, etc. All the routine but tedious things so I/my main fleet can stay on-station rather than having to spend (waste?) time flying back and forth.

[Morrokain]

The way I could possibly see A.I fleets working in Starsector as it is now would be to have them as automated sentry fleets that just guard valuable player owned property, like stations.

I feel it should ideally be kept simple, with more time spent by the player setting it up initially than time spent constantly going back to and maintaining it later. So, set up fleet specs, and leave. You only should have to come back to it if the fleet needs military assistance or the station's supply lines have been severed.

The settings for fleet size and configuration could all be under one U.I tab upon landing at a player owned station. To handle ships, this system could import variants (either default or custom from the player), and use resources from the station's stockpile to automatically assemble/equip and launch the defense fleet/s.

Mayyybe, if time permits and it seems reasonable from a design perspective, some kind of longer range patrol routine could even be set up to protect trade routes between systems, but the more complex the orders A.I fleets can take, the more difficult it is to get the whole thing to work without bombarding the player with complex u.i, a high learning curve and a huge amount of micromanagement time.

[Gothars]

Patrolling and trade seem to be the most straightforward jobs for AI fleets, they already do it. A nice way to fine tune the  behavior would be if you could assign officers to command the fleet, and their personalities influence their behavior. A aggressive officers might clear out some pirates wile on a trade run, a cautious patrol officer might wait for reinforcements, stuff like that.
A nice thing is that you'd probably train your officers in your own fleet before giving important jobs to them, so they are not just hired strangers.

[Linnis]

The problem with x games was that there was essentially no UI aside from a spreadsheet. Especially when there player is managing assets. I'd say starsector already had a better UI, and has the infrastructure to accommodate AI management.

[StahnAileron]

The problem with x games was that there was essentially no UI aside from a spreadsheet. Especially when there player is managing assets. I'd say starsector already had a better UI, and has the infrastructure to accommodate AI management.

What spreadsheet? The entire UI was nothing but cascading menus. A spreadsheet would've been an improvement.

X's problem was the simulator design of the UI and user experience (UX). Pretty much any game with a first- or third-person camera view has crappy UI for anything complex without swapping to a completely different system. (Especially true if they don't want to break the immersion factor of being in first-person.)

Starsector's UI is befitting of it's game design and indeed fits with the type of management interaction that X failed (and horribly at that, at least past a small squad or for anything complex, like ship capping.) AI player fleets for routine and/or mundane tasks would let a player focus on the main points of the game, IMHO. Though I think the fleet management screen could use a bit of work to help facilitate that. (Once you know what each vessel looks like and can name them, the big graphics feel a bit like a waste of space, especially for the frigates since the images are to scale, so lots of empty space.)