I''ve coded fairly simple but playable AI for old school 2D arcade spaceship combat before. Though not brilliant, they could give players a run partly because they could rely on faster "reflexes" backed by hardcoded hints for tactics and such. Lately I''ve been looking into what''s involved for AI for RTS games and fleets of ships. I don''t know if this idea would work, but one thought I had was that a fleet might be thought of as a single ship, conceptually. I should first say that my main factors are things like facing direction, hull strength, defenses, turning rate, and ship speed. A fleet would be some kind of amalgam of all of these factors, and would be treated as if it were a super-ship. Implementation-wise, fleets would be lead by an abstract, unkillable unit that used the same AI for planning as a single ship, with a few exceptions. A fleet unit would be able to subdivide and recombine with other fleets, for example, and could trade ships with allies. During the assessment phase of each AI loop, a "supership" would pit itself either against a single target (where it could weigh target value vs. damage damage over time) or an arbitrary collection of targets in a single area whose values have been summed. The goal ultimately would be to cut down on individual unit AI cycles, and promote smarter group behavior. (One of the things that really seems to kill enemy AI in RTS games is lack of unit coordination, with units often trickling to their doom or not attacking en masse). Decisions on individual movement and unit to unit combat would still be the domain of a single unit (mostly), but target choices and rule of engagement would be the domain of the fleet "supership." Does this seem sound? What, if anything, am I flat out missing? -------------------- Just waiting for the mothership...

You might want to think in terms of a centralized command. This top level command analyzes the broad situation and then sends ''fleet'' type commands out, which pertain to the whole fleet as opposed to separate units. Typical fleet type commands might be:

1) Maintain defnesive posture
2) Move with heading X
3) Switch to offense
4) Send out scout
5) Subdivide
6) Unite
7) Switch to formation Y
8) Send explicit command to ship Z

Each of these commands trickle down to the units. They are then responsible for interpreting any parameters that are not explicit as they see fit. Additionally, each unit could communicate between sister units to cooridnate certain elements.