It's exceedingly rare I even graze another human ship, save for Wing Mates who insist on getting in the way because ramming things to death IS amusing.
NPC's on the other hand... I have a thing for Plasma Accelerators. NPC's have a thing for coming to an absolute, 100% fractional second, dead halt before continuing on at whatever speed they were traveling. I'd love to know how to do this and live. But it does give them a peculiar advantage when it comes to dodging a plasma ball, and when they have good range... sooner or later someone off in the distance ends up eating one - or three.
Depending what ship these are coming from, I have done considerable damage to small ships at long range and previously had to stand the corner (9 minute time-out in another system) or (beta) pay an unholy fine. It doesn't happen frequently. It doesn't even happen infrequently, but it happens.
No "Smart Rounds" for Plasma - once they're loose, they're loose. Have done the exact same thing with Packhounds - a few in a swarm take out a ship, the rest smack some schmuck in the distance, and I'm bribing someone to keep from getting shot.
With respect to plasma fire, it is equally possible for players to dodge them. Because I fly FA off, I rely on, and have all thruster directions mapped to controls on my warthog throttle. I hardly have the best reflexes, medication I take sees to that, but by simply applying lateral thruster's when you see that telltale purple glow, even flying an anaconda or corvette, unless the enemy are right on top of you they are generally easy to avoid,
As to the issue some folks have of hitting unintended targets, I have never really had a problem. Where it has happened, and it is genuinely only a handful, it has been my own fault after being distracted by something else in the room. I don't use missiles often, when I do, it is only on pvp builds so I have no experience using them around many npc ships. However, fixed or gimballed, regardless of the weapon type, hitting the wrong npc has not been an issue so far.
I do always try to avoid tunnel vision, paying attention to everything around me; depending on the length of a play session I either use VR or trackir, and both really help in that regard. Constantly looking around and checking the scanner in the middle of combat are essential in pvp, where not paying attention is a shortcut to trouble. I also prefer deliberate fire and on weapons with slower projectiles avoid long range shots of chance over indiscriminate spamming of the fire button; something that becomes second nature after years of flight sims where ammo may be severely limited.
I had not really considered it before, but I suppose my ability to avoid these issues in ED has come from years of mistakes and practice to correct my flaws and remove bad habits in earlier titles.
