Hi Harlen,
The way AI is implemented in SS makes it difficult, perhaps infeasible with the present architecture, to have AI ships obey COLREGS. About all that could be done at present is to have AI give way (stop) in most crossing situations (even if it is the stand-on vessel under the rules).
AI ships are constrained to follow definite paths. Although they may swing wide of the path while turning, as required by their specific dynamics (ROT capability), if they are otherwise deflected from their paths they run in headless chicken mode. This precludes avoidance maneuvers that require a course change.
The computations involved in AI, which must be done for all AI ships in the environment before every frame is rendered, are already a very large consumer of processing resources and the principal cause of such problems as very low frame rates and QuestViewer aborts with newton.dll errors.
Perhaps the situation will be improved in Extremes, but that is far from a trivial problem.
Meanwhile, I suggest that you always operate in Rule 2 Mode when encountering AI.
The Mission Editor tutorial explains how AI works:
http://80.95.161.114/shipsim/forum/index.php/topic,2886.0.html (http://80.95.161.114/shipsim/forum/index.php/topic,2886.0.html)
Regards,
Marty