There are four AI combat styles:
All except noretreat seem to dictate engagement range and nothing else. Standoff enemies will fight at the maximum range of their weapons or close to it. Flyby enemies will make close approaches. Default enemies and noretreat enemies are in between. Noretreat also will make a ship not escape when its shields are down.
This dictates how rapidly the ship fires. firerateadj=“10” will use the real weapon firerate values. firerateadj=“20” will use half the real weapon values. firerateadj=“5” will use double the real weapon values. This cannot be set on a per-weapon basis in 0.99c.
This element dictates how accurate the ship will try to be. I don't think it influences the behavior of omni or “swivel” weapons. Too low and the ship will fight like an Imperial Stormtrooper (TM). Too high and it won't fire unless it can hit you dead center, which means it will rarely fire at all.
I'm not sure exactly what this element does.
(CX1) Used in ratio with a target's stealth attributes to determine how close the AI needs to be to the target to be able to perceive and react to the target.
The AI in Transcendence seems to be optimized for dodging. It will attempt to circle you, but instead of accelerating towards the center as one would expects it accelerates tangentially and is kept in the circle by its maximum speed. This results in it spending most of its time not pointed at its target, and the higher its maxspeed the more time it spends pointed away from you and thus unable to use forward firing weapons.
These are two separate attributes, but only the ratio matters for the effect on the AI. Very low acceleration may improve performance, but is less influential than maxspeed.
Maneuver dictates how fast the ship can turn. Higher maneuver will reduce AI performance as it will be less able to turn from its tangential circling to pointing at the player ship. Low values are more maneuverable.
The AI is not effective at using straight firing weapons with speed above 20 at maneuver 1 or 2. Higher maneuver values require lower speeds to be effective. An AI with omni weapons or full coverage weapon arcs will be fully effective no matter what the ship's properties because such weapons are independent of the AI. Spread weapons also can cover up the inadequacies of the AI, though not as well as turrets. Very low firerate (really fire delay) capacitor weapons are also more effective in the hands of the AI. The normally wasted circling time is put to use recharging the capacitor so that maximum fire can be placed on target when the AI does get its nose pointed at you. It may gain between one and two weapon levels worth of effectiveness depending on the firerate and recharge time. Except for very low firerate weapons firerateadj has little influence on straight firing weapons.