Chasers (EnemyPursuitComponent) and snipers (EnemyStandoffComponent)
used to beeline/close in from anywhere on the map the instant they
spawned - no matter how far the fleet was, which read as omniscient
rather than alert. Both now sit idle until the fleet is within their
own detection_range. Artillery's slow drift is gated the same way, but
reuses its own existing fire_range rather than a new tunable - outside
its firing envelope it has nothing to be drifting toward yet.
The enemy mothership deliberately keeps the opposite behaviour: it is
meant to read as a persistent, unavoidable stalking threat, not a
local sentry, so it gets its own EnemyPursuitComponentMothership.tscn
variant with an effectively unlimited detection_range - the same
scene-variant pattern EnemySpawnerComponentChaser/Artillery already
use for per-definition property overrides on a shared component script.
EnemyStandoffComponent holds a preferred distance from the nearest
player ship instead of ramming (advance beyond it, retreat inside
retreat_range_factor of it, drift laterally in the comfortable band
between) - never paired with a pursuit component. EnemyRangedWeaponComponent
mirrors VesselWeaponComponent for an enemy: fires an EnemyProjectile
aimed at the target's CURRENT position rather than led, so a moving
ship can dodge it (projectile_speed 260 vs the interceptor's 460
max_speed). Registered in EnemyDefinitions so it's placeable from a
planet setup by enemy_id.
test_sniper_enemy.gd went through a few iterations to get its own
timing right: physics ticks can run ahead of a SceneTree test's own
_process() clock under this device's load, so the cooldown-violation
check reads the component's own fire_timer directly (a rising value
means it refired) instead of comparing projectile counts against a
wall-clock wait, and manually repositioned ships need their
move_target re-pinned or Ship's own steering silently drives them back
to the stale target.
Part of the #40 conquest-mechanic breakdown.
