AI Weapon use

[Ixalite]

As of the latest release, the AI still won't use some (most) weapon combinations. Additionally, they do not use damage pulses effectively at all.
My suggestion would be to have AI move to an "optimum engagement range" assigned for each weapon, although fire continuously as they approach it.
A further addition could be the inclusion of Disintegrator blocks as a weapon recognized by the AI, with a range of zero. In this way, the AI would attempt to ram the target, if they had DI blocks linked to the core as a weapon.

 

[BDLS]

I'll add, I was observing the behavior of one of my AI fighters today. The main armament consists of a beam and 4 d1000 arrays. it has two turrets, each with an AMC array. The ship would only fire 1 of it's 7 possible weapon arrays at a time. If the left turret was shooting, that's all that would shoot. Same if it was using the beam, the turrets would just stop. I would expect the main ship to be firing both turrets constantly and something from the main ship itself. In the past, the AI would just spam EVERY computer hooked up to it simultaneously.

Can anyone else confirm this behavior? v.153

edit: also, when using the beam, they'll stay just out of range of the enemy ship with the beam out, not contacting at all.