I think that part of the frustration with these features comes from players being used to being able to do whatever they want to the AI unopposed. When the AI is no longer stupid and no longer bends over all the time, they feel threatened.
I'd argue that scavengers trying to claim debris from the fleet that literally blew all those ships up in the first place is pretty damn stupid.
Admittedly that's a special case, but it's clearly the AI trying to bend the player over here.
False: this is not my feelings at all. Also, this is like a year later and this garbage behavior still isn't fixed.
You say that it makes sense for independents to be mad I fought one of them; clearly you didn't actually read my post. I AM INDEPENDANT AND I WAS THERE FIRST. If they would be mad that I killed the vultures they should be just as mad that the vultures attack me. They literally are acting like pirates and then patrols jump in. Get you player-punishing double standards out of my 4x. There's no place for them here.
I will repeat myself because no one reads: It's nonsensical that the patrols (especially when I just saved them) would side with the vultures. That's the problem. It makes literally no rational sense. It's just arbitrary garbage that a logical person could never predict and plan for because it flies in the face of basic human behavior. It's just "to make things harder" and that's just awful, uncreative, *** false difficultly.
Would it be easy to change a setting that just makes them into pirates instead of independents because that's what they literally are?