auto_ai = yes; means that if the ship is added to a role defined in autoAIMap.plist, the ship will be given the AI associated with that role rather than the one in its shipdata.plist. If the role it is added with is not in the map, it gets its shipdata AI.
This applies whether or not the roles in shipdata and autoAIMap are plist-based or JS-based.
Sure, but at the moment, I am a little bizzy finishing the BBS pack and making it compatible with a couple of other oxp's.
Adding the lights can be done by simply adding the shaders to the shipdata.plists of the core ships. However adding "lights" involves editing the textures, which is not on my doto list at the moment.
The AI files can simply be used without modification. Police ships don't use their navlights though.