A utility score is the number assigned to a possible action in utility-ai. The score estimates how desirable that action is right now, given the current world state, targets, resources, and priorities. Utility-based agents compare the scores of all valid actions and choose the highest. In practice, these scores are often built from several contributing factors rather than one formula: distance, health, urgency, target value, cooldowns, and designer-authored weightings. (Yannakakis and Togelius, Artificial Intelligence and Games, see source-ai-and-games; Hanlon and Watts, Game AI Pro 360: Guide to Character Behavior, see source-game-ai-pro-360-character-behavior)
The score is not truth. It is a design instrument. If the scoring ranges are inconsistent, the AI becomes noisy or unintelligible.
Related: utility-ai, behaviour-trees, goal-oriented-action-planning, character-design