Robot Ship Rules for solo play - response

> Jon wrote:

--0) The Target ship is defined as the nearest ship in the forward or
rear
--arc of the robot ship OR the most recent target ship if no ship is in
--either arc.

The initial intent was a robot chooses a specific target ship and sticks with
it like a homing missile until a new target is designated i.e. when the
current target is destroyed. I think your proposal is better where the threat
decides the target. This is like the Doomsday machine in the STOS episode 'The
Doomsday Device' which was suckered by the Constellation when attacking the
Enterprise.

--in FT you need to define this in terms of points and numbers of turns,
I
--suppose. Better to say that is the targets speed is greater than it's
it
--will accelerate to it's targets speed or by as much is possible.And so
for
--deceleration.

The intention here was that robots are special and don't obey the movement
rules exactly and to minimise robot bookeeping overheads. I'd say the robot
matches
the target ship speed and can turn up to 3 points - PSB this simulates
the better ship control the AI is able to use i.e. M5 (?) in the STOS episode
'The Ultimate Computer'

--How about this also - the robot ship will not move into the targets
ships
--forward firing arc. If the move causes it to do so, it will attempt to
--'veer' into the nearest p/s arc instead.

I propose:-

The robot will avoid the most effective weapons arc but must always attempt to
close on the target i.e. no running away.

--If you have this rule, it's still possible to get the robot ship into
your
--forward arc (where, lets's be honest, all the nasty pointy things are)
but
--you have to move so it doesn't have a choice.

Agreed see above.

--and while on paper they look OK they tend to produce unsatisfying
opponents -
--they tend to 'spiral in' on you and you can beat them too easily.

The intent is that robots are pretty dumb and you can probably easily beat one
1:1 so have a 2:1 advantage in the robots favour. That and the nimble AI ship
advantage should give you a challenge.

Thanks for the comments.

Sincerely Tim Jones