Reading the dev log about the value of time and the period of time over which to consider the value of time, I was thinking for many of us humans, the value is based on a combination of optimism and your preference to make plans in the short or long term. Most people are either short-sighted or long sighted, depending on their personality. A long/short term planner personality trait as the basis for value calculations would make for a more diverse (less predictable) range of NPC decisions, IMO.

So I suppose my question is: what range of personality traits should we expect in our NPCs? I know 'greed' has already been mentioned as a trait. Will they be 'born' with a bunch of randomly generated traits or will the AI be so advanced, that the NPC will develop its personality, through neuron-style reinforcement based on the success/failure of it's decisions?

acr0b3rts wrote: So I suppose my question is: what range of personality traits should we expect in our NPCs? I know 'greed' has already been mentioned as a trait. Will they be 'born' with a bunch of randomly generated traits or will the AI be so advanced, that the NPC will develop its personality, through neuron-style reinforcement based on the success/failure of it's decisions?

The "best" solution would be combining both ideas, random assignments of traits that get reinforced or not by actions. But i think atm its fixed traits witch influence the neuronal networks decisions

It would be epic if the NPCs did adjust over time based on experience. Maybe the first time out an NPC finds a particularly rich asteroid leading to not only a belief that mining is the best way to make money, but a crazy sense of optimism. Think of all the miners that came to California during the gold rush, most of them did not strike it rich, but they worked for years on that assumption before giving up. Which leads to the other way NPCs could adjust their preferences. If everyone around them is getting rich mining then they will probably think mining is a good idea. On the other hand if most people in a sector are manufacturing or pirating that will be reinforced. It could naturally lead to sector specialization.

Obviously you would need some counterbalance otherwise everyone would be doing exactly the same thing. So you need some base personality traits like greed, optimism, laziness, combativeness, sociability, etc. The beauty of it is that even if 2 NPCs start with exactly the same traits they may evolve differently based on where they are, or 2 NPCs with slightly different starting traits may end up similar due to similar circumstances. You would not need that many axis of freedom to far outdo every video game out there as most AI is limited to fixed algorithms to determine when to shoot at the player. You could have an infinite variety of NPC all procedural generated.

And one more thought, it would be fun to use a Gaussian distribution so most NPCs would be run of the mill, but occasionally one would be super combative or a total bum, or the ultimate socialite. Maybe they would succeed and become a leader of a faction or maybe they would fail miserably, either way it would be amazing to see in a game.

I just keep getting more excited about this game with every dev log.