I think the NPC reaction to taking friendly fire requires some tweaking..

For example, crashing into the sides of a Capital ships docking bay can cause it to designate you as hostile, so you can't dock.. Well not until it warps to a new sector anyway.. Usually this won't cause it to fire on you though..?

Also splash damage from rockets will turn your NPC escorts hostile and they will start to shoot you.. I'm thinking if they are part of your escort perhaps they should NEVER decide you're hostile, instead you should lose credits/xp from the mission should you blow them up..

This is especially relevant to Capital ships, for example today I was escorting a Constellation through a bot sector and it was taking forever to navigate around the roids.. The bots are swarming all over it, so I'm flying tight down its flanks clearing them off when a few stray Neut rounds fired at an exploding bot hit it.. I'm rolling over the top to clear the other side when all three super heavy gauss turrets open up on ME! I'm doing my job and they shoot me for it =(

I think in general, for Cap ships at least, that should not regard stray hits as an attack, but rather require sustained fire from a friendly target before targeting it as a hostile..

Perhaps also add the ability to rearm ammo supplies at Cap ships, or at least for people on escort duty for that particular ship..

...slightly off-topic, but Constellations have such better turret coverage than Tridents that it's a *lot* easier to defend them from the inside