it's crazy that they can track us through an asteroid field with us targeted when we cannot target, or see them.

NPCs share radar. If you hide from all of them, none can find you. They will proceed to the last location you were spotted at and fly around there until you have been seen by another bot.

I tried this, with a single "Milanar Observer" in an uncharted roid sector.
It followed me, even though it would have been impossible to track my location without a lock on.
I stayed occluded and hid on the other side of the sector. Then magically the observer pops up, 80m from me, out of nowhere.

If this is indeed the case, +1

while it is not realistic the bots are stupid enuogh

-1 until there is someting better for them to use

I do want to improve the "intelligence" and limitations on NPCs, including radar occlusion and fog. I actually have specific gameplay goals for that, which bear on goals for "stealth" mechanics and the ability to run blockades, smuggle items across borders, steal items from the Hive, etc.

In related news, we just fixed a bunch of bot-related bugs yesterday. Here's to reduced server load and hopefully better pathfinding!

Did you add back in the crackbotting bug?!

Er, no. We added in the ability for bots to dock more consistently instead of clumping around stations, driving up the server CPU load. Fun stuff, I know.

I hear you on the crackbotting thing.

Crack is such a 90's thing -> X - botting?