Yep, I'm finding them harder to deal with too. I have been doing lots of passenger missions and I am getting interdicted a lot.
F/A is your friend, makes big ships small for agility. Cycle in and out, in for shooting, out for maneuver. Some have mastered F/A off full time, I'm not there and may never be, but it's essential for combat.
F/A does work wonders.
As an update, I haven't had too hard of a time getting bounties lately. Maybe I just hit a fluke or something. I earned 1M in credits this weekend between passenger missions and bounties. AI is certainly smoother in combat, though. The game feels less glitchy. Also, the amount of bounty seems to have dropped or been adjusted. An Imperial Clipper used to get me around 100k but now its only 60k. I'm hoping this was an accident that they plan to fix.