I spend bulk of the development time expanding the games AI. Latest improvement is the ability of NPC ringer ships to find and catch asteroids.
This is a multi-level improvement:
- Pathfinding AI has been improved with ability to ignore certain collisions. Without it no asteroid would be ever caught.
- Strategic AI now considers value of minerals and can decide to catch one, preferring the high-valued one.
- Tactical AI now understands that it needs to match velocity to the mineral, open up the excavator and create slight velocity difference.
- Finally, the Factions AI understands that it should no-longer try to grab a mineral that was already caught.
All these features should be shortly available on Steam with version 0.48.0.