Optimizing question

[Alienhead]

I'll try to paint the scenario. Say I have a rather large city I'm constructing.  I'm using Navmesh very lightly to update goto positions periodically.  I have about 10 cops that patrol the city on foot.  and about 30 citizens that wonder around. Here's my question regarding optimizing:

Would it be best to run the Ai script on each object independently ( just attach a script to the cop/citizen ) or construct a main logic function that handles the cops/citizens within a single control loop?  What is the price of running 40 character scripts VERSUS one main loop that controls them all ?  I would rather have them running independently but later down the line if it proves to be more optimized running them in a control loop I'd go that way.   

Just wondering if anyone else has faced this question before and If you had any feedback? Thanks.

[SpiderPig]

I don't know for sure - but the loop seems faster to me than heaps of scripts.  LUA is slower than C++ so I would think the less Leadwerks has to go back and forth between calliing a script the better.  Somone else may have a more definate answer. 

[Genebris]

One loop is always better but 40 is still nothing so don't bother in my opinion. Do what's more maintainable for you.

[Josh]

That should be fine without any special code. Just don't do everything every frame. Each AI doesn't need to constantly re-evaluate everything they are doing, instead expensive checks should use a delay so each one only gets triggered once over an interval of frames.