Just chiming in again to reinforce a previous point: the longer this poll stays open, the more it will slant towards "too hard". It inches that way every single day. We're now knee-deep in selection bias, and the poll no longer has any statistical significance. If the mods choose to keep it open indefinitely, it will eventually no longer look like a normal distribution, it will simply look like an upward sloping line. It's now completely meaningless and only caters to those here to complain.
Moral of the story, most of us who know the NPCs pose no real threat aren't in hiding and have moved on and are just playing the game in ways we find entertaining instead of raging on the forums. Kind of a shame that the NPCs didn't get more of a much needed upgrade though. But hey, you take what you can get, I guess.
You players who think the new AI is ok still think the game revolves around you.
Apart from the combat ability issue with the buffed AI simply being too hard for some people, not everyone wants to fly around the Bubble in a combat ship boiling up hard NPCs, no matter how much combat ability/experience they have. As a combateer I fly a selection of maxed combat ships and as such the only problem I have with the buffed AI is that the Elite/Deadly NPCs are often able to bug out before I can boil them.
BUT... as an explorer I fly an Anaconda maxed for jump range. My ship has practically no defences against the buffed AI but a single Small Turret Beam Laser with C2 Lightweight Mount, which I only have in case I find some Easter Egg on my travels that needs opening with a laser, and paper-thin 3D Shields with C3 Thermal Resistance for protection against light bumps when landing on a planet or negotiating a space station airlock. And no amount of Engineering upgrades is going to give my 1D Power Distributor enough charge to give my ship Boost capability to get out of trouble.
Now this wouldn't normally be a problem out in The Black, but if I want Engineer upgrades like C5 Increased FSD Range, I have to keep flying my defenceless Anaconda to Engineers all over the Bubble, carrying rare mats and commodities that I safely collected in a strong combat ship. The Engineers update makes this obligatory, whilst buffing an AI that
actively hunts me down for carrying rare mats and commodities: 'All that tasty cargo', 'The rumours were true', 'Good job I got to you first', etc. Flying the biggest ship in the game with a 6A FSD you'd think I was safe from interdiction, but often I am easily pulled out of Supercruise and there's nothing I can do about it. When it happens, my shields go down in about a second or two, and my hull in about ten seconds, losing all of the precious mats I've been collecting from all over. Again, in my defenceless research ship here's nothing I can do about it. I'm just supposed to accept that.
So what's the point.
The point is that the buff AI is no problem for combateers, but in the context of the Engineers update the buff AI viciously and gleefully punishes explorers who want to actually use the Engineers. In the wider context of explorers appealing to FD to make the game more interesting and fun in terms of exploration of the gigantic sandbox outside of the Bubble, the buff AI is a contemptuous insult.
As such, I have no problem retaliating in kind. When I get interdicted and boiled by the buff AI in my defenceless research vessel, I could just pick up the pieces, go back to one of my combat ships and start collecting the mats again, and maybe get interdicted and destroyed again when I go to cash them in at the Engineers in my defenceless research vessel again, and repeat until I finally get through to the Engineer in my defenceless research vessel whilst carrying the mats for my upgrades. Eventually I will get through, in much the same way that an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters will eventually produce the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. But it's far less time-consuming to simply assume from the beginning that I'm going to keep trying to visit an Engineer in my Anaconda with my valuable mats until I make it without being interdicted, and simply pull the plug on the computer in disgust every time I do get interdicted by an NPC, then simply restart the game with no NPC trouble at all, see the Engineer, cash in my mats, and get my upgrade just as I would have done eventually in any case.
If there was nothing wrong with the game AI update I would not have to do this.
The only answer I see is to make it more difficult for NPCs to interdict exploration ships with maxed FSDs, even if the NPCs are flying large combat ships with maxed Interdictors.
