From what I can tell, the 'personality type' of the AIs are immaterial. A 'Berserk Psychotic' acts no differently than a 'Serene Engineer'. This is because they share the same 'Angry file' and the same 'Politics file' as well as the same 'Speech' file.
The game data is set up so that each race can have its own files, but at present, they dont. They seem to all use the default...hence VERY flat personalities. I'm tweaking it for my data, but with no info on what the files MEAN, its trial and error. Its very time consuming.
Also, I can manage to get it to be hostile towards the players, but there seems to be way to instigate it to INITIATE attacks. I've seen it happen occasionally, but more often than not, it sits idly by and is squashed piecemeal.
I think the only things needed are:
1) to flesh out the files for each race, so that they are distinctive.
2) to make the AI in general (and ESPECIALLY the 'aggressive' types) more likely to pick fights with the other players.
3) to have the AI engage in 'punitive' raids and raids bent on economic destruction. I'd like to see it seen fleets (not individual ships like I see now more often than not) in the opponent's backfield and laying waste to their colonies.
If the AI was simply forcing the players to REACT instead of act, its other flaws would be greatly diminshed or at least not as noticable. If anyone else has played SSI's Imperialism II, you know just how unpleasant the AIs can be. They dont cheat, but they do know how to kick you when you are down!
All in all, it just seems like it just needs some more time invested in the AI dept. Now that I think the 'mechanics' of the game are fairly stable, MM should be able to begin working on the 'flavor' a bit more. I hope so as its the only thing really missing from an otherwise great game.
If anyone is interested in experimenting with the AI, I'm more than willing to test.
Talenn