What do you want in an AI?

[Atraikius]

If you havn't started the shipset - you could try going through the ships on USy for ones that would like help with AI's. The maker of the designs should have some idea of how they want them to act for you.

If you are making your own designs - come up with a general theme based on thier abilities (i.e. temporal), and then decide upon some fitting areas that they would excel in, and some significant weaknesses and technology that they would avoid. I think the combination of distinct weaknesses with overpowering advantages in thier areas of specialization makes for a very interesting AI to play against. For example - say the race has a very strong sense of honor, and uses hand to hand duel to settle disputes - you could make the AI only use short ranged weapons, with tactics of closing to short/point blank range in combat to carry over thier tradition of hand-to-hand duels, and then have them only use minimal intelligence to show a disdain for the cloak and dagger stuff due to thier sense of honor.

Deathstalker - have you ever happened to get an alliance with the Zorians? - they should act sort of like what you mentioned.