Second pass at the enemy ship AI. The AI is on the right. It's been a little tricky to get working because all of the movement is physically based, so enemy follows the same rules of the player. 

Anyone have experience working on this sort of AI? I like where I have it but I would like to take it further. Any advice would be appreciated.

 Currently I'm using a blackboard system with 3 experts, one for travel, one for avoidance and one for targeting at close distance. Happy to go into details if anyone is interested.

Follow the leader.  Finally got the enemy ships generating with engines and started working on their AI.  Enemy AI is a little simple at the moment but it has to start somewhere, should be far more interesting in the coming weeks.

Thrusters are now built based on core placement! Each core will provide thrust based on where and how it's positioned.

First look at adding components to the ships. Should give you some idea of how engines will be added. Ultimately this is what I decided to go with. The engine cores have to be redone and the engines will eventually only cover the area they are assigned. One jet will be assigned to each core. Obviously work to be done there.

 What do you think?

Added another part variation, still some work to do but I'm happy with it so far.

 The parts of the game I have been working on the last little while have primarily been precursor to work on the AI. Getting ships generating, engines working and placing correctly and so on. So I really hope to be able to get some AI work done in the next couple weeks. Once I have combat working and maybe a temporary inventory system up and running (and some sfx) I will be looking at making a test build to see what everyone thinks of the core mechanics.