Where are all the AI ships?

[Hoimar]

Ah, okay. Yeah, I also thought of all these issues and that simply increasing the number of trade ships would be …dumb. Also, they usually jump into hyperspace shortly after leaving the station, and there's no time to watch them or something.

I'd like to have ships being created when the player is close to a station or a planet, like you said. The problem is, I can easily spawn ships inside a station, then let them wait until the player is even closer and then undock. But for incoming ships, this isn't as easy, because they should'nt just pop up in front of the player or something, so there's more work to do on that.
Another idea I had is to have some transporters hovering around stations (like in original Frontier) for some time, then go on to another station, or something like that.
What also has to be taken into account is that these ships should also trade, but that'd better done in conjunction with the "dynamic commodity market" in the future.

As far as I read, AI ships don't have the ability of self-preservation at the moment, right? So that's another thing to be taken care of in the future.
By the way, what happens if I spawn ships around a ground station with "Space.SpawnShipNear", is there a chance that they're spawned inside the planet or are there checks for collision or something?
Also, how can I remove an AI ship from the game world? Because after visiting several stations in a big system like Sol, you'll again have very many ships created.
As a more general question: Are there any plans for extended player-AI interaction in the future?

Cheers

[impaktor]

Another idea I had is to have some transporters hovering around stations (like in original Frontier)

See thread on the "Longnose" bulkship, in dev.

is there a chance that they're spawned inside the planet

no

Are there any plans for extended player-AI interaction in the future?

yes, docking, trading, transfer of goods, crew, and passengers.

[Hoimar]

See thread on the "Longnose" bulkship, in dev.

Very interesting read.

yes, docking, trading, transfer of goods, crew, and passengers.

So, does it make sense to introduce a half-hearted system-local AI traffic? I guess I'm going to try helping you getting the other AI stuff you mentioned done.

Cheers

[bszlrd]

What do you mean by half-hearted?

[Hoimar]

Sorry, I formulated it kinda bad. :-)
I mean that implementing this local traffic thing right now on Lua side would mean that most of it will likely have to be thrown over again after we have implemented a better AI system. So I thought that this would waste resources that I could preferably invest into helping you with the other stuff:

docking, trading, transfer of goods, crew, and passengers.

And then we would have a proper basis for more advanced things like local traffic ("first things first").
Hope that clarifies what I mean.
I really think that these features would improve the game a lot. Especially something like your "Longnose" ship that could even serve as a mobile station.

[bszlrd]

Then, I guess it depends on how much work is it to implement it to that half-baked state.
Some life would be welcome in Pioneer, even if it will change down the line. (Note: Pioneer development can be quite glacial anyway)