More newbie questions

[Abaraxe]

Soo...Do you get enough of these? I have more I could throw at you, if anyone ever wakes up in the middle of the night wondering about poor ignorant newbies. For now, tho...

What is the difference between weapon families and families in the components file? I don't see a reason for the weapon families, but there they are, so they must be important, I suppose.

Patrol/ Sentry...I understand WHAT they do, but not why I would ever want to use them. any ideas?

AI ship design...I have created my own ship set based on the Sauron dominium (war world, pournelle) but am getting stuck on the AI. could anyone tell me where I could find a document or webpage explaining that file? most of the AI files i understand, but the entire ai design file is greek to me.

oh..one Last thing. would anyone be interested in alternate speech files for the races that come with SEIV? I have been modifying all of them to sound more individual, have about 5 done. worth posting?