lmao
I guess you never tried to roam 0.0, did you?
There is no time to wait, as a neutral appears in local, most will be warping to station or POS if not even much earlier.

That's the same as saying Russia and ISIS are friends because they both hate the US

The Sleeper AI does not distinguish between different players, it treats all players ships on grid equally. It assesses the threat for every new ship on grid and acts accordingly. If you would put a condition like:

"if player ship is aggressing NPC & another ship is shooting the aggressing ship then do not attack that ship"

that would be highly exploitable - fit a civilian gun on your logistics and never get NPC aggro. A multiple set of conditions that would basically check for "outgoing damage on ship > outgoing buffs on ship" would need constant loop checking and it would heavily load the servers.

So this is not a secret CCP plot to help carebears and changing how the NPC AI behaves would mean changing the entire code and this will not happen any time soon.

LOL

The sleeper AI sees ewar as a threat. The pvper must use a disruptor, the ratter uses no ewar (well usually, i guess npcers using tps may be at a disadvantage). This means the NPCs will always see the pvper as a threat over the ratter, despite the fact the warp disruption provides no actual threat to the npcs. I have never ever attacked a ratter and not had the npcs switch. Even when you can avoid their damage their ewar will ruin the fight most times, getting in a jam or neuting a point off so the ratter can bail.

If it wasn't a stealth CCP plot they would simply have excluded warp disruption from the threat matrix and/or toned down the new threat switch (which is dumb in any case).

I suspect some ccp dev got his navypoc killed by a hound one day and threw a hissy fit.

It's actually a very simple coding change. New ships to grid start at 0 threat (they don't appear to currently), and hostile modules activated only generate threat if they are directed at an NPC target (friendly modules, like remote repairs and cap transfers, still generate threat as normal). PvP actions instantly are threat-free.

I mean, if you're going from the standpoint of what was stated in the dev blog:

"When an encounter starts, the NPC will individually evaluate what is known of the opponent and target the appropriate opponent. As the fight evolves, the NPC will watch what players are doing and, based on several criteria, will decide if some or all of the NPCs should change their targets."

If you were fighting a hostile force, and another force jumped in and started attacking your enemy, you would not immediately swap targets and start attacking the new force. It's absolute tactical lunacy. Better to let them hash it out, and then kill whichever side wins, if necessary.

Now, I could see it being the case that once your gank target dies, the pirates proactively engage you, since capsuleers tend to slaughter them en masse, but they shouldn't, from a tactical standpoint, attack you unless you make a threatening gesture at them first. Attacking their target shouldn't generate threat.

The OP mention uncloaking so I assume he had to hunt his target and had the time to slowboat into point range. How damn long does it take to align an Ishtar out and warp? I know some people will run instantly when they see a neut/red in local but FFS if you can uncloak on your enemy, he was definitely not of the type to insta-run.

So I should be able to sit inside of an anom since there is no threat generated?

Now, I could see it being the case that once your gank target dies, the pirates proactively engage you, since capsuleers tend to slaughter them en masse

The rats just see a target of opportunity in the form of the attacking player because he is usuaslly in a much easyer to destroy ship. They act like any capsuler would by making sure they get a KM before going down.

I can understand the points made on both sides by the nul sec folks, we still seem to forget that the AI applies to all regions of space and the needs of all regions of space must be considered and balanced when changes are made. I am not saying the system is properly balanced but especially in high sec it is significantly more balanced than it used to be.

In nul you have intel channels, the whole concept of reds, blues and neutrals and let's not even go into the nearly empty systems that you rat in. High sec on the other hand is an entirely different matter there are no intel channels, there are no red, blues or neutrals there are simply players in ships. Sure some of them may have yellow flags as a suspect, or red flags as a criminal or for low sec status but there is no way to identify a potential threat in the way that you can in nul. When you combine all these factors plus the radically increased player count in an average high sec system and those high sec players face all of the same risks with none of the tools to help identify those risks.

Given all that must be considered and understanding the complaints of the nul sec crowd I say that until such time as the NPC AI is tailored to the specific region of space it is used in then this is a situation where the nul folks will just have to adapt to a system that is better tailored to the needs of the high / low sec segments of the game.

Hence they quite properly target anyone on grid, instead of taking sides.

The problem isn't that they'll shoot anyone on grid. It's that they'll preferentially target the ganker over the dude trying to kill them. I mean, why would any sane combatant prioritize the one effectively defending them over the one trying to kill them?

My suggestion was simple: hostile ship modules only generate threat if targeted at an NPC. Currently that generate threat regardless of their target. This simple change is all that's needed.

The NPCs will still engage the ganker once the gankee dies, and will still engage him if he attacks the NPCs, but won't instantly and automatically swap to the ganker simply because scrams and webs are high-threat modules, even when used in defense of the NPCs.

Yes - exactly, you want to make it easier to suicide gank mission runners, incursion runners, etc... by having them need to tank both the rats and the gankers.

The problem isn't that they'll shoot anyone on grid. It's that they'll preferentially target the ganker over the dude trying to kill them. I mean, why would any sane combatant prioritize the one effectively defending them over the one trying to kill them?

My suggestion was simple: hostile ship modules only generate threat if targeted at an NPC. Currently that generate threat regardless of their target. This simple change is all that's needed.

The NPCs will still engage the ganker once the gankee dies, and will still engage him if he attacks the NPCs, but won't instantly and automatically swap to the ganker simply because scrams and webs are high-threat modules, even when used in defense of the NPCs.

whatever way you spin it, rats protecting the ratter is a dumb mechanic.

Lol. They are not protecting ratters, they just want to kill both instead.

Ganker warps in, puts a point on the bear, rats go berserk on the ganker. I would say they effectively
ARE protecting the ratter.

Well, it's quite common thing to kill weak ships first.

Obviously, I completely agree that rats helping ratters is a stupid mechanic, which option do you think is the best way to fix it? I am going to assume that CCP have "reasons" not to give us better NPC AI.

you might invent some silly reasoning why rats would want to kill a weaker ship which is not threatening them at all and even helping, but it is still a terrible mechanic which basically gets the rats to protect the ratter from other players engaging him in sites.

well then CCP should change it, because pre-Retribution the AI wasnt that dumb and didnt spoil ratter kills so much - this is the whole subject of this topic.
If everyone is equal, as you say, and NPC dumb as you say, they could as well stay on target they were already shooting all time.

It's not that it was not dumb, it was only never changing target at all no matter the situation. Now the rats check what is on field and choose a target based on that.

A stealth bomber is an easy kill so they go for it when there is one on grid. Why would they keep shooting at a target which has been succesfull in tanking all their damage for what probably amount to a few minutes without breaking?

Might as well try to kill the new guy who just arrived, maybe they will finally destroy something. You want them to continue doing something that didn't work for a few minutes in the hope that a capsuler might help them when the vast majority of capsulers prefer to kill them. I wonder how "dumb" this is...

It's not that it was not dumb, it was only never changing target at all no matter the situation. Now the rats check what is on field and choose a target based on that. A stealth bomber is an easy kill so they go for it when there is one on grid. Why would they keep shooting at a target which has been succesfull in tanking all their damage for what probably amount to a few minutes without breaking? Might as well try to kill the new guy who just arrived, maybe they will finally destroy something. You want them to continue doing something that didn't work for a few minutes in the hope that a capsuler might help them when the vast majority of capsulers prefer to kill them. I wonder how "dumb" this is...