Bad AI

And how it hinders big ships.

Well, maybe I should have said "slow turning", but this is still a major AI problem.

I was playing my EVN:O awhile back, and finally got to fighting the Voinian Dreadnaught (A slow-turning, big, powerful ship for those of you who never played EVO). I'm in a relatively small Arada (It's like a heavier Lightning sort of), and both me and the Dreadnaught are reducing to using the same weapon, with the same range: Neutron Turrets (I fixed Paaran Station).

I think to myself, hmm... I can't Monty Python this thing. I think it's hopeless. But I notice that whenever I change speed drastically, specifically, when I start going faster then the Dreadnaught can move, the Dreadnaught does something surprising: It stops shooting at me totally, and starts to turn around in order to stop, turn back, and charge. I move back into the thing's range of fire and blast it, and it starts slowly turning back. However, it doesn't start firing again until it fully faces me. So, I continue darting in and out, take virtually no damage, and defeat the Dreadnaught.

You don't notice this as grossly in the Nova scenario because all ships with poor turning have long range weapons, and you really don't come up against any ships that you can't run in and blow up most of the time.

Yet, this is a major issue in TCs, I think. The fact is that it forces any slow combat ship I or anyone else make to have unlimited long/medium range weapons (The Dreadnaught actually had meduim-range weapons, but ran out while it was destroying my mission escorts), or be subject to this poor AI oversight.

Maybe it isn't as much of a problem as I make it, but it still miffs me...

Yeah, I actually noticed this in one of the "Stop Bureau Gunboats" or whatever those missions are that you get at the end of the storylines. I would stand a way off in a pretty fast ship and they would be coming towards me. Then I'd quickly dart to the side a bit and come back at them at a different angle. They'd all turn around to stop and I'd plow through them with my polaron cannon.
I think this behaviour was in EV and O as well.

It has to do with "Standoff Attacks" in the ship resource I think. I've seen this as well.