This doesn't make a lot of sense.. the AI should scale in difficulty based on the rank of the AI commander... i.e. an elite rated NPC should be tough to defeat regardless of the ship he's flying and a harmless one should be easy regardless of the ship they are flying. It should have nothing whatsoever to do with whether you're in an asp or a shieldless cargo ship.
I wasn't talking about the combat AI, so it's no surprise what I said doesn't make sense in that context. =) Let me clarify:
1) The combat AI (i.e., how well the AI fights after a fight has begun) should indeed scale by its elite combat rank only.
2) The non-combat AI of NPCs seems currently non-existent. It should be smarter, e.g., realise that if they are in a shieldless Eagle, it is not a smart move to attack an armed, shielded Asp. Meanwhile a player flying a shieldless cargo ship would be a tempting target for any pirate, so NPCs pirates spotting such a player should be smart enough to take advantage of the situation. And players in a Sidewinder would probably not be very good targets for an NPC pirate in a Python to interdict, just like players with a 400 CR bounty would not be very good targets for an NPC bounty hunter in a Python – there are much more effective ways to make money with such a ship (but of course they should fight to the best of their abilities if attacked by a foolhardy player, and they might attack in any case if the player is the only target around, e.g., at a resource extraction site).
3) While the above deal with AI as such, there is also the matter of which NPCs to spawn for which players. This is perhaps a bit more controversial opinion, but I think it would make the game better if the player's “level” (i.e., how well equipped they are) affected what “level” (combination of ship + weapons + combat rating) of hostile NPCs spawn near that player. I wouldn't make it like some RPGs where you never see a high level enemy until you are high level yourself, but given the scope of available ships and equipment I feel that it will otherwise be very difficult to make the game challenging for “high level” players without making it impossible for “low level” players.
Note that I'm not saying every NPC should always be defeatable - quite the opposite in fact; I feel that currently almost all NPCs are too easy (e.g., even when carrying a full load of cargo I tend to just submit to every NPC interdiction because the bounty can be considered just a source of additional income).
While it is somewhat “unrealistic” that a certain player would automatically happen to draw suitable encounters to them, much of such “NPC spawn bias” could be explained by the combination of NPCs choosing their targets smartly (point 2 above) and “behind the scenes rumours”. For example, a player making lots of money hauling goods in a shieldless cargo ship would surely attract attention at stations, and someone might tip off a pirate about a juicy target. I believe there is already something like this implemented for NPC bounty hunters, and law enforcement, i.e., they magically know which player they should interdict and scan, which I think is great - fewer “pointless” encounters for other players, and greater risk for criminal players (and this is again largely explainable by detective work done by the NPCs behind the scenes). But it could use a fair bit more work towards offering challenging encounters instead of just plain random ones.
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It would be hard to have different sets of AI's/ships for both solo and open play.
Yes, multiplayer makes things a bit more complex, but I don't think it's a problem if NPCs “meant” for someone else are seen by other players. If those NPCs deem that other player a suitable target (i.e., it seems like reasonably smart move considering risk/reward and efficient use of their time), why not attack. This would also mean that systems frequented by “high level” players would have “high level” NPCs around even for “low level” players, which I think is fine as long as the above considerations about attacking them are taken care of. Surely a lowly Sidewinder can slip under the a NPC Python's radar if there are Type-6's and -7's to hunt.
