AI and game world

anyone out there can supply a tutorial or essay or other info on the practical side of creating a living game world for a space game?

nothing overly complicated like X3: Reunion, but like

how to approach drawing, updating, and placing ships throughout your game world

the same for randomly placing planets.

and general world generation for your objects like space ships and stuff for a 2d space exploration game.

I might know the code but not how to apply it to create what I want , which we know is the real guru status of programming.

also could someone shed some light on AI programming. especially as it relates to working with objects like playership, enemy ship and enemy projectiles.

arg, why are you posting the same thing across forums ?

Anyway, what research have you done up until now ?

someone suggested I post it here.

ive been using resursive functions. like
movement
self_defense
flee

with if , elseif and else statements to control movement of an enemy ship in response to what the player does.

right now i have the weapons to just fire random.

i was looking for blitzmax specific info. what people have done... or a point to examples i can look at.

as for the game world, i dont know where to begin. i know everything needs to be drawn, updated and of course then behave with the AI i build.

so far for eachin loops seems to be the way to control the groups of things that i want to.

If mod (ememyshipvectorfromhere.Minus(ShipFaceingVector)) < FireRange then fire