Chose what class AI team mates will be

[Puggerugger]

Simple enough, if you are a captain of a ship in a lobby with a less than full ship, chose whether your AI crewmen will be gunners or engineers. This is mainly for ease in practise matches but it would also be good to ensure you don't get 3 gunners when you can't get more people to join your game.

[Plasmarobo]

So, the way the AI works is the captain must command them.

F1 sets the AI to balanced
F2 sets the AI to gunners
F3 sets the AI to repair

You can swap these rapidly. I leave it on F3 mode unless my guns are pointing in the right place, then it's F2 until I start taking large amounts of damage!

It's a crude system, but we might see improvement with the AI directory in adventure (Though I think that's more for PvE).
Balancing AI in game is challenging, but is pretty powerful as they can instantly adapt to your needs. Slightly better than choosing them static at the beginning in my opinion.

But I do hope they make better decisions (and stop malleting all my stuff/getting on completely the wrong guns)

[Shinkurex]

I'm not sure that's what he's referring to plasma... I think he wants to select whether the AI is a engie or gunner. This is actually already done within the code. for instance, if the boat has 1 pilot and 1 gunner, the AI will both be Engineers. If 1 Pilot and 1 Engie, you will have 1 ai engie, and 1 ai gunner. If you have 1 engie and 1 gunner, you will get 1 ai engie, and an ai gunner (AI cannot pilot the ship (No matter how much we holler for Jesus to take the wheel))

[evodoc]

Is there any reason for AI gunner? I mean do they use special ammotypes?

[Pickle]

The Gunner doesn't use special ammo so it doesn't really have a point.  You could have all AI Engineers and no AI Gunners and your overall DPS wouldn't change, although the repair effectiveness would improve.

The code for selecting AI is borked, because it frequently gives an AI Gunner when there is already a PC Gunner on the crew.  This even happens when you start with a PC Gunner and get an AI Gunner as third crew member from the outset.

Plus there's the generally screwed up 20+ seconds of absent crew when the AI vanishes as soon as a mid-game player starts to joins leaving a vulnerable gap when you're a crew member down until the player gets through the level loading sequence.