Try the following, fly up to an NPC while barrel rolling (one of the ordinary ones with the sane engines and no rockets), by barrel roll, I mean +StrafeLeft and +RotateCW. Then decelerate until you're not moving forward, maybe around 100-150m from the enemy. Keep your cursor pointed at the NPC. Most of the NPCs don't know how to handle this. If you get fired on at all, it'll be about three times, then they invariably just stare at you without moving. As long as you don't stop rolling, you can now fire on them and not get any response except BOOM. :)

Basically, when engaged, NPCs should try to be doing something that involves battery power. Either they should be firing (even if they can't get a lock, they can at least fire near their target and hope that the target accelerates into it), or running and dodging - get that turbo online. Attempting to get a lock on the enemy for indefinite periods of time is a bad idea.

- Mesostel Ze

Ive noticed this myself.

Fixing this may open up yet another problematic bot behavior... they might start shooting at a distance then breaking off, repeating if measures against it are not implemented. Im sure they can fix this, but hopefully without making the bots skiddish or use simple 'fly away, shoot, fly away, shoot' tactics.