I am So Ready to be talking actual AI gameplay development in Limit Theory.
For now, I really enjoyed your summary, Damocles -- that is some good stuff. I'm not an AI pro or expert, but let me offer a couple of additional thoughts.
1. It seems to me that the optimal point in unit AI is somewhere between predictability and randomness. In a word, good NPC AI demonstrates "intentionality": the perception in players that the NPC has goals but is free to try to achieve those goals in environmentally-reactive ways. That is, NPC AI feels most right when the typical player perceives an NPC's visible behaviors as surprising but still plausible: it's acceptable as a kind of thing that NPC might do, but it's done in a way that doesn't seem hard-coded or scripted.
I'm thinking the way to achieve this is to define NPC tactical AI as a two-level decision system that supports variation within a larger pattern.
The larger pattern could be related to resource-maximizing goals (for strategic play) or well-defined environment-exploiting tactics (for tactical play). Even a solitary NPC ship could have a pattern of hiding behind asteroids and plinking at you, or making fast head-on runs, and so on. But that alone would feel scripted; the perception of intentionality comes when there's individualistic variation within these patterns: this NPC flies straight at you at maximum speed, while that NPC jinks wildly while flying quickly in your direction.
The point I'm laboring to make here is that I suspect players judge any computer game -- and will judge LT -- on the degree of intentionality they perceive in its NPCs. So LT's NPC AI ought to be designed to maximize that perception of intentionality for the kind of gamer who's most likely to play LT.
Which is Josh. So... if he's satisfied, I suspect we will be as well.
But we can still talk about it until then.
2. As another example of great NPC AI, let me offer
this document from the developer of the AI for F.E.A.R., which you will still see discussed as having some of the best tactical AI in any single-player FPS ever. If you haven't played it, you should. No game is perfect, and this one isn't, but it's nearly a masterclass in small-unit urban tactics.
You actually reminded me of F.E.A.R. when you mentioned Thief. I also love Thief (the original of that name, not the new... thing), including the guard alert state barks, but F.E.A.R. went Thief not just one but two better. 1) Its enemies were smarter, both individually and as groups. If you took cover, they'd lob grenades to force you out; if you held up for a moment, they'd send individuals out to flank you while some stayed behind to draw your fire. 2) You could slow down time. It was pretty much just "bullet time" from The Matrix, but it was implemented so well that every use felt fantastic for the entire duration of the game.
And it was the combination of these two features that really worked. By itself, the slow-time would have been overpowered against the usual "rush the player" AI. And the group tactics would have been hard for a normal human character to survive. But using slowed time against clever opponents working together made one feel like a tactical genius. And -- like NPC guard barks in Thief -- enemies in F.E.A.R. would react audibly to your actions. When you used slowed time, one enemy might yell, "He's too fast!" Which would make sense until you slowed time right in the middle of his yell, and then it would sound like a foghorn while you raced behind him and took him out before he could react.
When I ask Josh about how enemy ships will coordinate their actions so that groups become more dangerous than just the sum of their numbers, it's this feeling from F.E.A.R. that I'm thinking about.
I'm not suggesting LT should play like F.E.A.R. -- I'm saying that if LT's grouped enemy tactics versus the player's researched abilities make me feel as clever as F.E.A.R. did, it will have achieved something special.
