Is it just me... or do the random bots that hang out in Sedina, etc. have the old old bot AI of staying back at 200-300m and being generally annoying?

What I remember about energy weapons being kind of useless unless you wanted to take some hull damage back then seems to apply to these bots now.

Is this intended? Or a bug?

It's unintended, but not really a BUG, Zoras.
They are more annoying now. You should try the Deneb BP bots. Sheesh!