Boarding & diplomacy

[Rich.h (OP)]

I am aware that any attack results in an immediate -150 rating from an NPR, but does this also apply to boarding? I recently had an NPR send what turned out to be two 7500 ton missile destroyers to poke around and look at Sol. Since these vessels where of an unknown design and appeared from scans as though they could of been carrying weapons, and did not acknowledge themselves when hailed a security group was sent to intercept them and determine what the situation was. When they simply ignored the security group and proceeded to head straight for Earth, boarding shuttles were launched.

The problem though is one boarding attempt went fine the other failed first time around, so one ship was still in a position to fire  on me while one was under going a boarding action. However the second vessel seemed to ignore the boarding shuttles and the security group who were following at zero range and carry on with their heading. So was this boarding action not viewed as a hostile attack? Was it that they saw they were heavily out sized to the security group and didn't want to start a fight they would loose? Or something else?

[83athom]

That seems to be a bug with missile ships. I noticed the same thing with a hostile npr in my game. he has ships with quite a few missiles on a lot of his ships (fired at my colonies, and recovered tech data), and he clearly sees me as hostile. However, he will not fire at my ships despite them being slow and big and them being well in range (he does have active sensor lock on them). Although, he may see that as a useless effort because they do have stupid amounts of shields, armor, and pd so will simply save his ammo for a colony(?).

[Rich.h (OP)]

If it is a bug it must be a random one as I have been fired on by plenty of them in the past. Originally in this example I had discovered this NPR with a stealthy scout ship, it finally got spotted and "escorted" out of their system. The NPR sent two of these missile boats through the JP to Sol following my scout, once there they did not act in a hostile way and were just buzzing colonies in what looked like a data collection excercise. They had been pinging me with actives now and again which again seemed like intel gathering. I am confident that had I done nothing they would of just buzzed all colonies in Sol then went back home, what seemed odd is when my "inspection team" boarded the first ship I would of expected the second one to view this as a hostile act and open fire.

So the only thing I can guess at is either there is a bug and this wasn't seen as hostile (zero shots were fired by me during this). Or there has been work on the AI done since 6.43 and they actually take into account their chances of survival before simply opening fire?