It stops being a matter of skill when my guns do three imaginary bars of damage and the enemy has a percentage of hull left.
NPCs simply should not steal bounties as they are not players, and competing with them for said kills leads to situations where you end up trying too hard and shooting someone who is shooting the very same target. That design decision is going to cost you players.
I disagree with your first two points.
Timing your weapons certainly involves skill and NPCs don't know they aren't people, nor should they.
Without this type of reward there is no reason for people ( and forces them apart ) because it comes down to luck.
Also this would get rid of the players who would just run around tagging a target and running off to the next one.
It's still not luck, and there is no need for the game to get rid of players who do what you describe because anyone annoyed by what they are doing can just shoot them down or go somewhere else.
In the game, sometimes NPCs fly right into the line of fire from angles you simply don't have enough time to react, like from the "bottom" of your view obscured by the whole cockpit. Do you suggest I should start training my reaction time to take it down to bot-levels? Milliseconds? What about turrets you don't have that much control of, fire-wise? And what if turrets shoot 90 degrees north where I can't see and NPC gets in line of fire up there? Is it my fault too?
Yes, you seem to lack situational awareness and this is your fault.
Do not engage hostiles where bystanders can easily place themselves in harms way and manage your turrets better. People you don't want to shoot around? Put the turrets on forward fire, or set them to a different fire group.
Lets see how happy your face is when youve had 6bountys in a row... Stolen..?
Out of the well over two-thousand bounties I've taken throughout beta, gamma, and release, I have had maybe a dozen "stolen" by NPCs.
Re. Solution 2 - that may be so, but it completely negates teamwork and co-op gameplay, as there is no way to share the spoils. I teamed up with someone for the first time last night hunting bounties, and in the heat of the battle it's very difficult to organise who takes the killing shot, in larger teams, especially with people you don't know, it would be impossible and you would be competing with others on your side.
It's not hard to get a system setup so people can take turns getting the killing shot. If stuff is popping so fast that it comes down to luck, you should probably split up or look for bigger targets anyway.
Pain in the ass when you're raining death on someone at the rate of 5 hits per second, then someone comes in and shoots one rocket.
Yay, it didn't matter that you grinded it's shields and hull for 10 minutes, the 100k is now the guys or NPCs that shot one rocket.
Yes, it's annoying, however there are numerous counters.
For NPCs that take a protracted time to kill (e.g. Anaconda) it's best to pull them away from other NPCs.
Regarding other players, enforce bounty etiquette by killing those that don't heed it. Most CMDRs don't need help against most NPCs, and firing on their mark unless that CMDR is obviously losing the fight is generally just rude.
