Feasibility isn't my point. The intend of Red.Queen is to test ideas and Arcen refuse the mod path for the sake of game's integrity and consistency (decisions that might sound hard but that I totally agree with).
Likely too complicated for new players, and too much work for our overburdened Devs.
Being a complicated waste of time that might only be fun to a few advanced players is exactly why I put this in mods, not as a suggestion to devs.
Maybe it's because I am an advanced player (albeit I don't think so) but I love this idea. Adding depth and complexity to a game that is already very deep and complex pleases me a lot, and I think many AI War players play this game because of (thanks to) its depth/complexity. So we would be all "advanced players" in that regard.
Also, Chris and Keith are super-busy with SBR now, for sure, but there is a time where they will come back to AI War. We all know the next expansion isn't for tomorrow, but it will come. "Overburdened Devs" is irrelevant. However, I'm sensible to the question of wave of time. Is giving depth/complexity to players that embraced this game for depth/complexity a waste of time? I don't think so. But it is, indeed, a big suggestion. I think ideas like more independent AIs or even a third AI are ideas we should consider seriously and not wiping them on thoughts like "not fun to me: don't bother devs with it".
Now, my contribution to the idea.
I want to raise a deeper problem (at least it's a problem for me): in general, the two AIs are too indistinguishable. I would hammer the problem by the side of personalities and AI Types. I unearthed a
post of mine about AI Types. While this is not directly linked to the idea of having two different AIP pools, I believe a revamp on the AI Type topic would also participate at distinguishing better the AIs.
More specifically on your idea, Traveller, I think making AIP per AI isn't a big coding hassle if we can come up with a neat project. What would this idea involve? Instead of having one gloval AIP value, each AI has one. Easy. The HUD display these two values instead of only one. Easy. What increase AIP? Some building on death (they would increase their controlling AI's AIP), the Auto-AIP (increase both ; we can have two Auto-AIP settings) and some special human actions like warheads (increase both). Fine. Then where is AIP used? In reinforcement and waves, for both quantity and Tech Level (each AI use its own AIP pool instead of the global), and I think it's all. I see no big problem or coding hassle.
You point some other interesting issues, like who get the AIP reducers. While evenly distributing DataCenters sounds trivial, you raise the issue of the CoProcessors and the SuperTerminal. This is a matter of design and balance, and while we could find tons of ideas and debate for eons on what and how, I think we can reasonably let it as an open question that will wait its time to be solved. However, no big work here, just a delicate tweaking.
TL;DR:Interesting to anyone?
Yes: me!
