Does the new AI planetary nav mesh in 3.17.2 allow ground AI to fire at player ships with something like an Animus or a railgun? And can they use ground vehicles with the tech as it currently stands?
TL;DRNo: the planetary nav mesh only lets AI walk across planets, while firing special weapons needs behavior changes, different nav mesh sizes, and vehicles would need extra tech to drive.
No. So basically what the nav mesh does is it allows AI to traverse the planet so they can walk the Earth like Kane.
So back to me, AI planetary nav mesh allows AI to walk along the planets?
Correct. And then we need behavioral changes in order to actually get the AI to use special types of weapons. And then from there, we'll also need different sizes of nav meshes in order to have larger creatures or smaller creatures navigate properly. And then for vehicles, that's a different tech discussion, actually getting them to drive around, and it will be extra tech in order to get them to do that.
As is common with many aspects of Star Citizen, this is the first tier, the first implementation. It allows us to test it out live, because it's always worth reiterating that even our live environment is an alpha test environment.