I think the first advantages of officers is they have skills that improve ship performance a very meaningful amount.
Second, Ships with officers seem to be a lot more aware of the tactical situation in the line of battle, and factors that into its target selection.
Im not sure of how the AI is actually coded, but the implementation seems to create the following emergent behaviors.
Risk awareness: the AI is aware of other ships weapons and ranges and flux level and assigns a level of risk to areas of space around opponent ships. The aggressiveness setting seems to adjust how much risk an AI is willing to tolerate to employ its weapons, and for how long it is willing to tolerate it. The line of battle that forms is an emergent behavior of ships trying to employ weapons while trying to not stray into areas of overlapping enemy fire that are too risky.
Vulnerability awareness. AI seems to be aware when opponents are flux locked or flamed out, and will accept higher risk to exploit the vulnerability. It’s also aware of its own vulnerability, and will back away to safety if it when that happens. General AI also appears to be aware of nearby ally ship vulnerability, and will act to assist where it can.
Where I think officered ships differ from general ships is that the officers are aware of the risk pressure it and allied ships are exerting on the enemy, and will try to sometimes engage the enemy at greater risk to try and get a kill or to break up the line of battle stalemate. General ships just try to employ their weapons based on their risk tolerance, maneuverability, and flux level.
Just my opinions based on my observations 100 or so hours into gameplay.
P.S. my son and I are very impressed with the quality of AI in this game. It’s somewhat predictable at times, and occasionally does dumb things, but it is competent and tough to exploit. The developers did a great job making interesting spaceship combat
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Topic: What personality is applied when you put your flagship on autopilot? (Read 2470 times)