A: As this addon is now feature complete we're not planning on adding anything else, but we're still open to suggestions, particularly when it comes to replacing some of the older vehicles in the roster as time goes by.

Just be aware that if they aren't creations you've made yourself then you will need the permission of the original content creator first.

If you're too shy to ask then I can certainly ask for you, but just remember that a lot of the content on the steam workshop is made by people with an artistic rather than technical mindset and they can be a 'challenging' bunch to deal with at the best of times (Yes, sadly the stereotype of the "tortured artist" exists for a reason), many of them aren't exactly people persons and can often throw a hissy fit when you feature content of theirs, even when you give them credit, so don't be surprised if some of them say No outright.

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A: These are the catch-all generic bad guys originally created by the now defunct software company called Brøderbund and served as the villains in several of their computer games in the early to mid 1980's.

I've included them both as a tribute to Will Wright and Brøderbund, as well as a relatively politically nondescript enemy to fight against, as in today's politically charged climate I'd prefer to avoid making the bad guys appear too Russian, British, American, Chinese, Iranian 'etc' so they tend to use ships belonging to a wide range of nations.
The rationale behind it is that the Bungeling Empire have purchased a lot of their original ships from overseas and have now started to domestically produce many of their own variants of those.

Fun Fact - The flag of the Bungeling Empire that I've used for the aircraft and submarines is actually the old logo for Brøderbund software (Three Crowns) but on a red background, unfortunately it's too small and pixelated to make out very clearly in-game, although I may eventually create an actual flag texture for the warships at some point in the future.

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A: One step at a time. Remember that I'm not an actual coder, I'm merely an amateur modder and hobbyist that asked for help and was fortunate enough to get assistance from the very talented Haiwei/Professor Sins.

With all that being said we've made some good progress and already added AI gunners that only fire at player owned and civilian vehicles instead of the indiscriminate MC's we had on initial release, which is already a big step forward.

Don't forget that this is meant to be a relatively unobtrusive addon, that's why it's called "Bungeling Raiders" and NOT "Bungeling Invaders", as this addon only adds seagoing vessels and a couple of basic aircraft for the player to attack at the moment.

Unfortunately the extra code required to get adequately functioning land vehicles, convoys 'etc' is going to take a lot of time and hard work and since Haiwei/Professor Sins is currently away studying full-time in University now it means that those features are currently on hold and may only ever appear in a future addon, either if he returns or someone else is able to assist with the coding required.

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A: This is completely intentional. Those markers are NOT the actual enemy, they are just where the intelligence reports suggest they are, as such they will fade in and out and will not be 100% accurate.

Any player that get's close enough will be able to detect and track the Bungeling Raider, either via their own radar or visually regardless of what the map marker tells them.
Not only is this more realistic, it also stops players from exploiting the use of the map markers to get cheap and easy kills by using long range radar guided missiles that make use of mid-stage GPS waypoints - such as NNTC's RGM-84D Harpoons - at distances of over 20km away without using their own radars.

For content creators looking to test out their own creations or weapons against the bad guys that want the 100% accurate and always on map markers back again, all you need to do is type ?hostile_ai_debug in the chat/console window.

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A: They will only attack a vehicle that belongs to you, i.e. one you have been sitting in or have spawned in via the workbench or a mission. This is intentional to stop the AI from wasting their missiles on random players that aren't even a threat, as well as to stop the Gunner AI from being exploited by players distracting the AI by getting closer than another player controlled vehicle that's actually shooting back.

The hostiles are too fast and they won't stay still long enough for you to use explosive charges or small arms fire against them very easily, but if you do somehow manage to destroy one of them like that then, well done - you definitely deserve the kill and the bounty reward money that comes with it.

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A: That will be because the Bungeling Raider has detected that it's been locked onto by a radar guided missile or a Fire Control Radar and it's launched it's own chaff in response.

They only carry a limited amount of chaff and there is a delay of about 20-30 seconds between each launch, so a smart player will be able to stagger their missile launches or time their attacks appropriately to increase their chances of scoring a hit.
Alternatively you can add a kalman anti-chaff filter to your own missiles in order to make it harder for them to be fooled by chaff and other such decoys.

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A: Not unless you follow them around constantly. The reason why is because of how the Stormworks game engine works.

To keep performance overheads down all AI vehicles, whether they're civilian ocean going vessels, aircraft or hospital ships all exist as simple references that are computed in the background - usually speed, heading, position, current damage state 'etc' and unless they are fitted with a 'Keep Active' block they will only come into physical existence within the game world when a player is closer than 2km to them, otherwise they won't really interact with the world or even with each other - which you can clearly see when you go into the debug mode.

Ideally you should be using the Improved Civilian Traffic addon that's linked on the main page instead of the default AI, as this not only includes some important bug fixes, it also lets the roaming AI vehicles slowly respawn over time back up to their maximum amount.

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A: Yes, but this only applies to some of them now and this tends to be the case even with the AI enemies that come with the original Weapons DLC Conquest mode.
However with a recent update there are now submarines and several other ASW capable vehicles included in this addon which will happily launch their torpedoes at any underwater creations used by the players, both of which can be toggled on or off via the options in the starting menu.

Be warned that the only torpedoes currently available in Stormworks (at the time of writing) that can reliably track and intercept distant targets using a combination of GPS and sonar tend to make use of the old deprecated sonar, which cannot be fooled by decoy noisemakers; so even though the torpedoes have been nerfed significantly compared to the original ones made by Falkner-Muir, they can still be a little unfair on players using realistic and/or sensible creations that don't make use of exploits or glitches.
In order to try and keep things as fair as possible I have given each enemy torpedo that's launched a limited lifespan and a random chance of being a dud, which means some of them may just bounce off your hull harmlessly or only cause minimal damage due to the force of the impact, giving players in civilian vessels a slim chance to escape.

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A: Stick to the smaller ones to begin with before working your way up to fighting the larger, more deadlier enemies.
Just remember that the Bungeling Raiders do have an Achilles heel and that happens to be their reliance on technology and automation in order to keep the number of crew down to a bare minimum. As a consequence, all of their weapons are tied into the main fire control system, even the crew served machine guns; If you are able to damage the fire control radars on each of the ships then you will have essentially crippled their ability to fight back.

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A: Yes, but I chose to include both as during testing we found that removing either of those tended to cause too many issues.

For example, if we remove the option for them to explode after sinking then it means that it forces the player to spend a huge amount of time and effort trying to make an enemy ship blow up if it sinks to a depth greater than 200m, especially if they're not in a heavily armed attack submarine.

Likewise, if you turn off or delay the explosion then not only does it make it harder to tell when you've done enough damage to kill them, but if they sink in a particularly shallow part of the ocean, such as right near the coast or if you encounter the "completely damaged by fire but won't sink" glitch, then you're going to be stuck with an invincible ship that will just stay there for the rest of the game adding to the hostile ship counter.

Then of course we've got the good old fashioned Stormworks bug where sometimes if part of the ship sinks into the seabed or collides with another object it begins to spin around and glitch out, slowing the game down for the player and causing massive amounts of lag for all the other players on the same server if they're playing online.

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A: Yes, you can find a list of them here:

• ?hostile_ai_respawn - Respawns a single enemy.
  
• ?hostile_ai_clear - Clears all the enemies from the game world (be aware this will also reward the player)
  
• ?hostile_ai_settings - this is the command used for changing the current game settings, it can be followed with allow_missiles, show_markers, max_vehicle_count, respawn_frequency, max_vehicle_size, allow_submarines 'etc'.

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A: As this addon is now considered feature complete it means that we don't plan on making any more changes at this time, especially those that require any further coding or vehicle design work.
Our focus right now is primarily on maintenance and to fix any bugs that are likely to come about as a result of any future updates and DLC released by Geometa.

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No, please don't treat this steam workshop's comments section like a messenger app.
Try to keep all comments posted relevant to the creation that's being shown, especially regarding any bugs that may have come about due to any recent patches introduced by the Stormworks developers; anything else should either be sent as a direct message, posted on the appropriate steam message board or via discord.

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A: Yes of course you can. All I would ask is that you give credit where appropriate, there's no legal requirement to do this of course, as Geometa own everything created for this game that appears on the Steam Workshop as part of their EULA, but it is considered common courtesy and people that take someone else's content without giving credit are usually looked down upon by the rest of the community.

You can find my public GitHub page for the Bungeling Raiders mod via the link below:
https://github.com/Captain-Robertson/Stormworks---Bungeling-Raiders-Hostile-A.I.-