Okay well back to the competition. I'm putting together the AI right now and have hit a snag. I want the star systems to rotate. This will be easy to do. I also want to have the enemy starships move around intelligently looking for good shots at the player (they already shoot with deadly accuracy). I do not have enough time to do both because doing both would be 10x as hard as doing one or the other.
For obvious reasons having an AI that maneuvers to a good firing position is just so much easier than one that does this while taking into account a dynamic playing field.
So what I'm thinking of doing is making the bad guys be 'killer satellites' that rotate around the star and shoot at the player. The player must judgement to hide behind planets and in asteroid fields avoiding the shots in an ever changing playing field.
I'm disappointed I'll not be able to create intelligent enemy ships. But the game will still be interesting.