Hmm. The thing is, AI reactions are not instantaneous or even frame-perfect (though they're pretty fast), its precision isn't exact, and it doesn't always (or even often) lead perfectly. Its maneuvering to avoid shots is veeery far from being perfect, as well - most of the shots you perceive as being dodged by it, it's not even directly aware of.
I mean, I can understand being frustrated - especially facing some of the faster frigates, such as the Pather Kite, or the smaller phase ships - but I don't think "AI cheating" is to blame here. I wouldn't personally call slightly-better-than-human reactions cheating, anyway - in most cases, it doesn't result in superior performance but instead barely makes up for not anticipating/planning ahead.
Alright, so maybe there's a variation of a few frames, but it's nowhere near enough. Like I said, when fighting a phase ship, it will vanish as soon as you click, with inhumanly fast reaction time. I mean, look at this!
Not a single hit in that entire time, at point blank range, with guns that fire immediately! I'd be hard-pressed to react that quickly even in a 1-on-1 situation, let alone in a big battle where I have to pay attention to half a dozen different ships and all kinds of other stuff besides. Using my usual pulse lasers, which have a half-second charge-up time, at optimum range? Forget about it. It vanishes as soon as the shot starts charging, before it even goes off. That ship is invincible until it veeery sloooowly runs out of flux capacity. In that time you'll either be flanked by other enemy ships or, if you face them, by the phase ship itself. God help you if you have to fight more than one of these things.
It's the same thing with everything else. The AI has near-perfect timing for raising and dropping shields, firing missiles, teleporting, etc. That's to say nothing of thoroughly human fumbles, like forgetting to raise the shield while engaging an enemy or accidentally shooting an ally (which isn't helped by the fact that allies from other fleets have HUD markers in a very similar shade of orange to that of enemies, btw) or failing to notice a ship approaching from behind due to engaging a distant enemy and having the screen shifted all the way forward, which are things the AI just never does. I wouldn't mind it if elite military ships were piloted by a perfect AI, but a ship with novice crew and no officer? That doesn't seem right to me. On the whole it feels like I'm fighting a bunch of robots. Which I suppose is true, but I don't think it should feel that way.
As for going out of map bounds, it's a bit of an issue that only affects retreating ships, on both sides.
It affects me in every single battle I fight. Because allied AI is so useless, I tend to go solo. Because I go solo, I kite a lot. Because I kite, enemy ships try to flank me and surround me. Because they try to flank me, I strafe to the side. Because I strafe to the side, I bump against the edge of the map. Because I can go no further, enemy ships are free to flank me by going out of bounds. Because they flank me by going out of bounds, I lose. There are no words for how infuriating this is. Not that going solo really has anything to do with that, that's just an observation based on my current playthrough. The same thing kept happening to me when I ran a full fleet in my previous playthrough in the previous version. The need to maneuver exists in almost any situation.
The fact that there even exists an arbitrary box that physically prevents my spaceship from moving through empty space is just mind-boggling to me. I get it, an infinite battlefield would be really difficult to do, so that's a no-go, but these edge cases really, really need to be handled better. Preferably in a way that doesn't involve bumping into them. I have no idea how your implementation works, but I'd probably center the battlefield on the player so that it's impossible to leave it. Any ships that stray far enough from the player are despawned and their fights auto-resolved. To prevent the battle from breaking up into several fights that drift apart from each other, the farther an allied ship is from the player, the more it prioritizes moving towards the player. I know you're never going to do that, but it's just a quick idea of how I'd handle it. A much easier solution would be to just limit the AI ships to the same rules as the player, or even better, prevent them from going anywhere near the edges of the map, reversing the situation.
As far as the friendly AI, btw: it's exactly the same AI.
Yes, it is the same AI, and I bet you if the AI could speak, it would complain about other friendly ships passing through its firing arcs too. Maybe it shouldn't be the same AI? It seems entirely logical to me that the player's ship should be treated differently. When one AI ship does something frustrating to another AI ship, nobody cares, it's just AI. When it does it to the player, it makes the game less enjoyable. To my mind that's a problem.
This also relates to my previous point about AI ships having perfect awareness of what's going on around them. They can stop shooting to avoid hitting allies very reliably. Humans can only look at one thing at a time. Often I have to keep my eyes on the edge of the screen to see what that big cruiser is up to and only keep track of the little frigate I'm firing at out of the corner of my eye. When an AI ally passes in front of me in such a situation, there's no way I can notice it in time to avoid blasting it to bits.
I feel like in both cases, it's a question of learning how the systems work and making them work for you. Want an escort that's not aggressive, for example? Put a timid officer in charge. Etc.
Not to be overly sarcastic here, but I haven't seen a "won't pass through your firing arcs while you're firing" among officer personality traits yet.
That said, thanks for your feedback! It's definitely valuable seeing how someone perceives what's going on, coming from a different place. I mean, "how things work" isn't more important than "how they're perceived", and I'll certainly keep this in mind. I will say I don't assign the same priority to "fixing" this that you do, and am not even clear on what "fixing" it would mean, given what's going on. My apologies; we're just not on the same page here.
You're welcome. As for not prioritizing fixing these things, I get it, fixing seemingly minor problems and polishing gameplay mechanics isn't the same kind of fun as adding brand new features, but I'd really hate to see this game go down the same path as Mount&Blade and a lot of other indies whose developers just kept adding rough features and never polishing them until they got bored and abandoned the projects, and the games ended up being clunky, disjointed messes. You're not falling into that trap too badly yet, but I'd really, really hate for that to happen to Starfarer.
Oh, and btw, one other thing that may have been mentioned already. Investigations into ties with other factions are just crazy. All I did was hunt some pirates for a Ludd bounty, then a bunch of investigations of my ties to them came up, and now everyone hates me for it, even factions that are on friendly terms with the Ludds.