The key word here would be "ATTACKING" one can attack without scanning, one can also attack without targgeting. Were not getting targgeting mixed up with scanning are we.
No, no mix-ups. Once you target a ship it takes about 10 seconds for the scan to complete. Nowadays I almost exclusively do wing assassination missions in a Corvette (I don't use KWS at all), so you can identify the bad guys without having to scan them - they are always the only Cutter/Conda/Corvette in the USS. So as soon as I drop at the mission USS (always "threat 5" for wing) I deploy weapons, target the said Cutter/Conda/Vette and open fire. I did that yesterday right after the update and suddenly got several bounties in a row as I started to attack them. They still said "Wanted" when I was firing at them, but as I was firing at I started to get one bounty after another for "assault" (200cr each). Then after killing the main target I was getting bounties for attacking their terrorist friends in the same manner.
Then I moved to another wing USS, and same story. Walked away with 5600 bounty on me after the two wing missions (so ~28 "assaults"). The credits aren't the issue, it's looking for IF in the vicinity with a large landing pad, that is. Didn't get notoriety for any of them thankfully. All that was on Open mode too - maybe it's an issue, since Open was buggier for me than solo for a while (like USS's don't spawn, Engineer upgrades sometimes not being applied to modules, few other things here and there).
Yes but it sounded like you were saying that you no longer had to do a regular scan of a non hostile ship before you could engage it unpunished (which i'm pretty sure is what Commander Sethyus is saying they did, they didn't mention using the KWS scanner)...
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Yes, they changed both the way KWS works, and the fact that you no longer would get a fine for attacking wanted ships regardless of whether you scanned them or not, as Spoil-t said. My issue has nothing to do with KWS, it's with the other thing.
I really don't think they intentionally reverted the changes, otherwise they would have said so. Most likely it just got broken.