I jumped into a mid-route system whilst on a journey elsewhere and before jumping out was panning my ship's nose around, checking the area out visually rather than just looking at my side panel or the System Map. I saw an NPC dot and selected it, which I usually don't bother doing for non-player ships. It turned out to be a wanted Federal Dropship with a >100K Cr bounty. I wasn't carrying an interdictor module but I thought wth, that's too good to pass up, so I followed it to a RES and dropped in on its FSD wake when it got there. Once I'd blown it to bits I went for a quick spin through the asteroids. I'd never seen rocks look so huge before; I think it must have been the combination of grey hues and the 'mist'. Anyway, before going on my merry way I thought I might as well nab a few more ships as it would be a quick way to make a few more credits.
One of the ships I downed had a buddy, so after the kill I still had a red triangle on my scope and took a few hits. When I targeted him he was showing as Clean. I let him have a few more shots at me and this time made sure that the hits I was taking were from him and not some random stray shots from elsewhere. They were his but he didn't turn Wanted. Wondering about why this was I remembered I'd been in a wing last night and had switched off the 'report crimes against me' function. I switched it back on but by then I'd lost the nasty chap on the scope, so I carried on hunting.
A bit later I wandered close enough to him that he reappeared on my scope and he eventually latched on to me, but stayed clean. A bit miffed that I couldn't shoot him, even though he was shooting me I decided to use his stray shots to my advantage, and chose a nice big T9 whom I'd just saved from a pirate. The video below shows me hiding behind the NPC T9 whilst the angry chap was firing his fragment cannon at me. You can see the T9 being hit repeatedly.
My question, therefore, is did my assailant remain Clean due to his initial hits being allowed by me (via the function selection) and thus from that point on he would remain so (i.e. the function selection is pertinent only at the point of initial assault, and any subsequent changes do not affect [NPC] assailants who are already attacking)? Or... do NPC shots only have a bearing on their targeted NPCs, so as I was his actual target, the untargeted T9 did not turn him Wanted even when taking multiple hits? I'll do some more tests myself unless anyone here can tell me the logic behind what happened.
[video]https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6XM9IaMh_3_SzZXc2pOQVNHcmc/view[/video]
One of the ships I downed had a buddy, so after the kill I still had a red triangle on my scope and took a few hits. When I targeted him he was showing as Clean. I let him have a few more shots at me and this time made sure that the hits I was taking were from him and not some random stray shots from elsewhere. They were his but he didn't turn Wanted. Wondering about why this was I remembered I'd been in a wing last night and had switched off the 'report crimes against me' function. I switched it back on but by then I'd lost the nasty chap on the scope, so I carried on hunting.
A bit later I wandered close enough to him that he reappeared on my scope and he eventually latched on to me, but stayed clean. A bit miffed that I couldn't shoot him, even though he was shooting me I decided to use his stray shots to my advantage, and chose a nice big T9 whom I'd just saved from a pirate. The video below shows me hiding behind the NPC T9 whilst the angry chap was firing his fragment cannon at me. You can see the T9 being hit repeatedly.
My question, therefore, is did my assailant remain Clean due to his initial hits being allowed by me (via the function selection) and thus from that point on he would remain so (i.e. the function selection is pertinent only at the point of initial assault, and any subsequent changes do not affect [NPC] assailants who are already attacking)? Or... do NPC shots only have a bearing on their targeted NPCs, so as I was his actual target, the untargeted T9 did not turn him Wanted even when taking multiple hits? I'll do some more tests myself unless anyone here can tell me the logic behind what happened.
[video]https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6XM9IaMh_3_SzZXc2pOQVNHcmc/view[/video]
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