Part of the charm when jumping into a storm sector is not knowing if there are hostile bots present.
Currently the combat music plays before the bots are detected which gives away thier presence.

Please play non combat music untill a bot is actually on radar....
Not knowing is part of the fun!

I like the general idea of music changing on the fly due to the presense of bots or "enemy" ships, but not sure how hard this would be to change. Currently the music changes on what is present at sector load time, and although it is possible to use commands to change the music, detecting a hostile and stopping the current music, and then selecting the correct "battle.ogg" (there are 3 different ogg files that play when enemies are detected, based upon location) then playing it sounds like a lot of faffing about for something that most people turn off after a week. I base this on the fact that NONE of the VO videos I have seen contain the music from VO.

Maybe a simpler idea (simpler is good and get more chances) is to play the battle music if an ion storm is present, regardless of enemy present? Gives the idea that maybe there is bad stuff in the storm, but does not indicate whether enemy is present or not. Should only require a condition to be met on sector loading, rather than due to the activity in a sector.

Of course if it is simple enough to implement your idea, then that is cool too. The music changing back to "chilled" at the end of a fight or skirm would be kind of neat.

How about when a bot pops up on your sensor a text pops up that says "Your about to get f'd in the exhaust pipe"