The ship AI is very diverse depending on its initial objectives given by the station commander. This list depends on the ship class. There is however one grouping that can be made between ships and missiles. There initial behavior is differed. A ship will spawn in and then slowly start to drift towards the player his firewall. Meanwhile the ship has a scan range around him that it will keep an eye on. If one of the objectives pops up in this scan range the AI will kick into gear and start doing something. This behaviors is written down below. Missiles are a lot simpler. They spawn in and go full throttle right towards the firewall.
note: Every AI ships can be confused by tossing active decoy blocks into its scanning area. Each ship will behave differently to it and large ships tend to be more resistant against decoys. But toss enough of them close enough to a ai ship and they will go full ♥♥♥♥♥♥ on the thing.

Frigates (level 1)
Frigates have a provoking and stalking task. Since a frigate is a pretty weak ship it will pick its targets carefully. The first priority of a frigate is to find a player that is not controlling a ship in its scan range. If this is the case the ship will fly towards the player and attempt to kill it from close range. If the player is however controlling a ship or if the firewall is nearby the frigate will keep its distance and attempt flyby attacks where it will dive towards its target and fire its guns before calling the retreat and lining up its next diving attack. However if the ship detects a clear path towards the firewall or if it gets to much damage it will choose to self destruct. It will plot a course to its nearest priority target (firewall if it is clear, else the nearest player) and crash itself into that while arming all onboard warheads (if it has any).

Destroyer (level 2)
Basically these ships are Frigates on steroids, They are slightly bigger then frigates and have some heavy armor around vital parts. Instead of machine guns these ships relay heavy on turrets. There main objective is still the harassment of players so its way of scanning works the same as a frigate. However its attack looks differed. It will attempt to park his ship about 500 meters away from the target and then slowly orbit it while having its turrets take care of the enemy. If the destroyer spots a clear path towards the firewall it will not immediately self destruct. But if the ship sustains to much damage it will Try to 'park' itself into the firewall. If there is no clear path it will go for the nearest hostile (player owned) structure or player it can find.

Small Ballistic missile (level 3)
The missile might sound simplistic, but it is far from. The first part of its live spawn it will spend flying towards the firewall. This is not to complicated. However if it comes in a 500 meter range of the firewall it will active its scanning and arm its warheads. only now can a player confuse the missile with a decoy block. It will then simply continue flying towards the firewall and explode. The missile has no path detection. So if something gets in its way (ship, astroid, wall, other ai) it won't react to that and simply impact and explode on that.

Cruiser (level 4)
Cruisers are the main ship of the Incursion fleet. There goal is to cause as much secondary damage as possible. This mean it will hunt down whatever gets in its scanning range and destroy it. These ships are a nightmare for any miner or remote outpost as they will most likely be attacked by a cruiser. When a cruiser takes to much damage it will active its self destruct to destroy as much of it self as possible so the player cannot salvage the wreck. It does not attempt to crash into a target as its most likely to slow to do any useful damage.

Large Ballistic missiles (level 5)
Are mainly the same as there smaller version. With the exception of arming its scanning range at 2000 meter distance and also activating all modules on the missiles (Some misses are equipped with explosives and a gravity generator, causing a rather big mess of secondary explosions) These missiles also have light defenses that shoot at nearby targets if the attempt to intercept it. This makes them somewhat resistant against decoys as it is possible that the missile shoots the decoy before it detonates. It will then realign towards the firewall and attack.

Battleships (level 7)
These are the largest ships in the mod at the moment. There goal is the destruction of the players HQ. it will set course towards the headquarters and wont stop for any secondary target until it is in range of the HQ. It will then park itself at 750 meters for its target and fire whatever weapons it has at it. If the battleship starts taking to much damage it will start ramming the base until its so damaged that it will activate its self destruct.

You might have noticed in the list above that there are no new ships in incursion level 6. This is because the AI gets access to the ECM station here. For the player this is a true nightmare as it gives each ship a one time use 'super power'. Each and any of them quite destructive or extremely bothersome. I won't spoil all every effect but expect things like this to happen once the enemy gets a ECM station up and running:

• Magnetizing: A ship suddenly attacks wrecks that start to accelerate towards it. Once they get to close there 'hug' is all but gentile
  
• boms and bombardment: Dive bombing frigates and heavy cluster bombardments tearing trough your defenses
  
• Emp blasts: Suddenly your light is not working and you find your ship moving away from the hostile targets with nothing to stop it.
  
  
  The AI and the alarm system
  The alarm system works in both a cheating and ship abusing way. first of we have to compass. This thing behaves like a ballistic missile, but without the forwards thrust and it targets a random hostile station. This makes it so that the compass always points towards that particular station.
  
  The alarm system itself is actually not scanning at all as it would look like in game. In reality it are the different ai ships constantly telling the alarm system what they are doing. The alarm system will then figure out what in game triggers to activate
  
  
  
  References
  • Commander turn: Refers to the timer interface (60 seconds) the commander ai has to wait before it can do something. So the commander will take a turn each 60 seconds
    
  • Resources: A number that globally refers to the money the ai has to buy ships and stations with
    
  • AI: Artificial intelligence. Although this mod stretches the world a little as there is no machine learning implemented into it. So technically its not really a AI.
    
  • Level: The incursion level of the AI (1 to 7)
    
  • Live spawn: Each ai ships has a x amount of minutes before it runs out of live time and self destructs.
  
  disclaimer: Since the mod is still in the early stages of development the text above is bound to change without any type of warning. If I feel like something is to overpowered or certain behavior is incomplete I can change this to my will. I will update this topic once in a while although this version might get slightly inaccurate after sector 15 version 0.2.2 until I write a new update again. The current accurate version is: 0.2.2. Last updated on 21-2-2015