Can or do AI use scanners to see through walls or radar to detect ships from far away? Do they have access to the same technologies that the players do? And if so, how do you balance that?

So in terms of radar, I can speak for the ships, but yes, the AI just uses the same radar component as the one that the player uses in the ship. So depending on the ship that the AI is flying, it has those radar capabilities based on the balance of that ship.

We want to use the same on FPS as well. With characters, obviously the balance is through the traits that we've spoken about and the fact that they do have their loadouts, these items, first of all. So for example, if we give FPS characters the radar, you can also decide from a design perspective if you want them to use it or not. First of all, obviously the ship is a bit special, because ship versus ship, you have to use the radar, but basically the perception system for the AI can be extended with different senses, as we call it. The radar is one sense. And the behavior already has specific nodes that allow them, for example, to ping through the radar. And the other thing that we want to do is to react to being pinged. And also in that case, basically, it depends. First, you will react if you are pinged if you do have a radar that notifies you of being pinged. And we can also say maybe there are some easier missions, or, with the balance of the gameplay flow that we want, we can say, OK, those guys should not react to being pinged, but they should be able to ping, so that we can also use the AI to train, because this is the other part of game mechanics that is important, right? You want to use the AI to also teach mechanics to the player. So you can say, okay, now we make you a mission where the AI can ping you, but you are safe to ping yourself. So they can still kind of learn that mechanic. And there, as with the player, we use the exact same item. So the AI can say, I want to ping very quick, I want to ping very long so that it can be detected. And we can absolutely control this. And what this does is it just updates your perception. So the AI can basically know the snapshot of your position from that. And we don't really cheat on the AI perception, right? Vision, audio, radar sense, and pinging updates, basically.

I think there are several levels of that as well with the AI. One of the levels is, oh, well, they'll just know that they've been pinged, and so suddenly they'll change alertness status and maybe go hunt for you. And another one, the higher-up level, is that they will be able to pinpoint where you are and immediately go to you, like, oh, I've been detected.