Despite the ongoing insanity mentioned a couple posts ago, development is still ongoing, albeit slower. While the slowness can partially be attributed to moving, the fact that I'm working on the combat AI mechanics is probably the bigger problem.
Since this is a simultaneous turn-based game, computer controlled battles are the only feasible way of resolving battles. Not wanting to just base the fights on "all ships attack the nearest ship until it dies," I've tried to give players control of what their ships do; however, there are still a lot of unknown factors. If you set a large, powerful ship with massive guns to attack the nearest target, and that target happens to be a fast-moving agile fighter, what happens? I wouldn't want the large ship attempting to chase down the smaller ship; it would be like a eagle attempting to catch a housefly- unlikely and pointless even if it happened. However, I feel that having ships be omniscient and automatically knowing what ships they should attack is the wrong direction as well.
I get the feeling that battle AI is a problem I'll be tweaking for a long time to come, even after release.