I have reached a point in the game I am making where everything is just starting to fall into place. So now that everything is aligning I can't help but notice that my AI is the weakest part of the game. The game is a 2D Sci Fi space combat game. The game leans much more towards arcade games.

At the moment my AI uses a rule based system, something like this:

public Class AIRules
{
  	//Rule1
 	void ShootEnemyInRange(){
   	//Code for firing etc.
 	}
  
  	//Rule2
  	void LookForTarget(){
  	//Code for looking for a target
  	}
}

Rule 1 has priority over Rule 2 etc. So as can be seen I am no expert at making AI.

I would like to improve my AI but I don't have months to spend learning something new. I was hoping that someone could point me to something simple that I could learn to improve my AI, that will only take about a week to learn.

It could be any small practical thing. Something that would be useful to a indie developer. 

You could try to implement a Behaviour Tree and, when it's ready, try to add some minor variation to the behaviour with small decisions based on random numbers.

Entity-Component Systems are also a good thing to take a look at, since you could set different behaviours to the same looking enemy, and make them slightly unique.

Regards.

1 hour ago, jjimenezg93 said:

You could try to implement a Behaviour Tree

That is actually a very good idea. So far I have only used Behaviour Trees in engines with tools for the Behaviour Trees. Implementing such a system on my own shouldn't take as long as trying something new that I am unfamiliar with.