Demonen

I say they open up vehicle AI to modding under the condition/license that they are free to use any and all pieces AI mods they find useful to patch the full game. I'm not much of an AI programmer myself (I just do rather boring webapps and statistics engines for a living), but I'm sure there are a lot of very capable people out there that would LOVE the challenge. Hell, I'll even take a stab at it for fun, perhaps I accidentally create something useful (such as "fast algorithm to calculate if somewhere is easier to get out of with backing up, rather than trying to turn around"). I know from some previous work that writing a pathfinder is REALLY hard, especially on complex terrain. That's why I dumbed down my game-like prototype to use a simplified navigation mesh. Problem was that this would either make the vehicles clip through the ground following the simplified mesh, or hover slightly over it. Anyway, yeah, turning-on-the-spot would make it a whole lot simpler to pathfind in tight spots. Since it's clearly an electric vehicle it probably has one motor per wheel, so it's not at all impossible to swirl like a top. Just make the back wheels steerable and the suspension on the middle wheels able to retract them or whatever. If they can fly to a different solar system, surely they can turn a wheeled vehicle on the spot. All this being said, the Walrus AI is mediocre, it's not horrible. Far from it. I remember some pretty frustrating points in other "complex terrain" games where the AI was much much worse, even when the vehicles could turn on the spot AND ignore terrain detail (rocks, trees etc).

This is even after the patch?

"Real" lasers can't be seen at all. What you're seeing is either the ionization or flat out combustion of the air between you and the target (depending on wavelength). Since weapons-grade lasers don't actually exist yet, we don't really know what the effect would look like, do we? Anyway, I love the "fat" laser, and the color is proper pew-pew-grade red. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

I fetched it manually off the FTP server last night ;-)

Yeah, the film grain effect is ... not my favorite feature. As for the lasers? I love them. Pew pew!

I'd love to set them to patrol in pairs. When one pair is low on fuel, the other pair takes off to cover the first while they land. Oh boy, I'm gonna mod the L out of this game!

Yeah, I'd like to see this too.

"Not selected", as in ... what? I have to take out another vehicle and control that in order for the deck guns to fire?