Finished reading here. I stopped at Tailgunner's note to learn how to pay attention to names (and I hope its clear I did not just cut~n~paste Tail's [full] name but typed it until I can now have it in long term memory).

For the SimHQ board, one example of AI programming that would be useful in both offline and online flight simming (dull dull description followed by explanation in next post below)

The tactical space game O-R-B (Orbital Resource Base) allows the player to command hundreds of AI ships either individually or collected into groups. The ships conduct their own very simple combat. The player may select what formation the groups of ships will fly in. For example "X" formation, line formation, Vee formation. The corresponding idea here is to allow flight sim mission builders to define formation that AI planes fly instead of being limited to a single default type (thinking of Forgotten Battles here).

The O-R-B player may take any number of individual ships and order them to group into a single fleet. In O-R-B, if this number exceeds 20 ships then the ships form multiple formations of 20 ships (or whatever number is left over for the remaining formation). These multiple formations are easily controlled and act as a single entity (fleet) but still retain individual ship behavior but confined within its formation.

Even better, the player may define AI behavior for each ship or groups of ships. The available behavior includes total agressive and attack anything within range, shadow or escort another ship or group of ships, total evasive behavior, or "neutral" behavior where the ship/group ignores any targets or threats to itself. Further behaviors include maximum distance before retreating for re~arming weapons. Many other behaviors that I did not explore in my short time playing the space sim.
~ http://www.o-r-b.com/
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