if you launch the xenonauts exe directly and steam is not running, steam is not started so i guess we can say the game can run independently from steam.
also, for release, desura won't be mandatory, users should be able to register it on steam, so really, the limited edition has no technical value.
too bad it's not available yet anyway...
are creating creating some sort of action => reaction patterns?
i have a friend who was lead dev on cycling manager and he told me they used this kind of behavior table for the ai.
i was said that this is kind of cheating, but often it gives better results in a controlled environnement than a more advanced ai which can be a huge investment for initialy poor results (i can take as exemple CA who supposedly redid the ai for empire total war and ended with some half baked result which they admitted but never corrected)
i guess what count is having a good result, not having a smart ai just for the purpose of it.