Fleet, crew, and role AI — design capture

Captured 2026-07-10 from the owner’s spec (Star Valor inspiration). Not yet scheduled; depends on the economy foundation. This closes the loop on the original vision: the ship-class taxonomy (Miner/Salvager/Freighter/Trader) and the drones-inherit-roles decision have waited for this since day one.

Fleet

The Vindicator is the permanent prime hull (owner spec, 2026-07-13)

Vann’s progression does NOT discard the namesake fighter when a larger hull becomes available. Vann is the substrate core; the Vindicator is his durable primary body and remains with him for the whole game. A compatible larger ship is a host with a Vindicator cradle: the fighter contracts/nests into the host and links its core to the host engines, weapon grid, cargo, and crew. It can deploy again without losing its own upgrades, silhouette, or damage history.

This creates two upgrade tracks: Vindicator upgrades are personal/deployed capability; host upgrades are fleet-scale endurance, capacity, and firepower. The desired failure rule is emergency deployment/ejection if a host is lost, subject to later balance and implementation design. A host left behind needs crew or a fork to operate independently. None of the host-cradle mechanics are implemented yet; keep them as a separate progression slice rather than folding them invisibly into ordinary docking.

Player recruits/buys ships and assigns each a role. Fleet panel docked on the RIGHT side of the screen, grouped by role:

[Fighters] — escort the player (follow + engage hostiles near the player)
[Miners] — mine asteroids in the current system, return ore
[Salvagers] — salvage ship wrecks (requires: destroyed ships leave wrecks instead of vanishing — wreck entities also feed the pixel-destruction idea)
[Haulers] — keep player-station stock at set levels (requires player stations + commodities)
[Traders] — buy/sell from/to player stations for profit (requires trading economy + price differentials)

Role AI = compositions of existing brain behaviors (ShipBrain combat, TrafficBrain travel/dock patterns). Escort is buildable first; the rest unlock as economy slices land.

Escort is ONE primitive with an anchor + leash (owner spec, 2026-07-11)

Escort — “hold formation on an ANCHOR and engage hostiles near it” — is a single behavior reused everywhere by swapping just the anchor and the leash radius; do NOT write it three times:

Player-fleet fighter: anchor = the player, medium leash.
Drone (any role): anchor = its carrier, TIGHT leash (launch, act locally, return). Drones ARE escorts with a small leash — same code.
Raider pack: a spawned group elects a LEADER (e.g. the toughest/first hull, or the marauder if present); the rest escort the leader. The pack moves and fights as a unit instead of a scatter of loners, and killing the leader breaks it. This is emergent from the same escort primitive — the anchor is just another ship, not the player.

So the build order is: escort(anchor, leash) first, then it powers fleet fighters, drones, and pirate packs alike. A miner/salvager drone is escort + its work behavior on the tight leash.

Combat ships ROAM when idle (owner spec, 2026-07-11) — BUILT

DONE: ShipBrain now patrols with no target — a slow loop (PatrolThrottle 0.5, PatrolRadius 2500) around the spawn anchor, re-picking a point on arrival, whiskers keeping it off hulls, trigger cold. Aggro interrupts to pursue; patrol resumes when the fight ends. Future refinement: weight the roam points to purpose (belt for raiders, lanes for militia) instead of a plain circle around spawn.

Crew / officers

Ships carry crew slots scaling with ShipSize (xs = pilot only; s = +1; m = +2; l/xl = bridge crew). Officer types modify the ship they’re assigned to, e.g.:

Co-pilot — unlocks autopilot conveniences (auto-dock, auto-follow lane)
Gunner — fire rate / extra weapon mount usable
Navigation officer — speed/fold charge bonuses
(mining/salvage specialists for yield later)

People are assigned to ships; an assigned+crewed ship can join the fleet. Officers are the progression glue: finding/hiring better crew upgrades the fleet without new hulls.

Drones

Drones inherit Fighter/Miner/Salvager role behaviors but operate in a small radius around the player ship (carrier-style: launch, act locally, return). Same brain compositions, tighter leash parameter. Drone bay = weapon-slot item (WeaponType.Drone reserved since the taxonomy was created).

Dependency order

Economy foundation: commodities, station trading, cargo holds, mineable asteroids, wrecks-on-death
Player stations (buildable orbital platforms — see docs/design-stations.md)
Fleet: recruit/assign UI (right-side panel), escort AI first, then miner/salvager/hauler/trader roles as their economy hooks exist
Crew officers layer
Drones inherit roles