And if an unspotted ship moves into a cloud the AI would cease fire whereas a human would keep following the tracers. AI radar doesn't break balance and is a useful feature, especially if both teams have AI. It's simpler and more balanced to have AI always shot.
You got me there, but it still feels like it's a toss up between two negatives. I know muse has no interest in making anything remotely complex about AI behaviour, they stated that they should never stand to be a replacement for humans, but sometimes I feel that it also means they'll never program them with more than a basic level of similarity to human players. In a perfect world, AI's would retain knowledge of unspotted enemies that flee into clouds as long as hits on them are consistent. Once they are not, the AI forgets them. That'd probably take a little more coding than just "if they're within this distance, shoot at them". Additionally, enemy weapons fire would trigger an AI response too, but that won't happen either because again, no time to update something that, if the game is being played as it is meant to be, shouldn't even be part of it.
To be fair, if the AI reacted like that, they'd have better reactions than many pub match crews.
I understand the point that AI shoot at ships that can't be seen is a pain in the arse, but equally, chem spray and buffs are very often visible through clouds, which they should not be, there's a lot of minor details we sometimes have to dismiss for our own sanity.
On topic: Love the idea! It's painful enough having AI on a ship, but adding this to the "gunner" coded AI would be great. This way if you have one human filling the ship, you have to rely on the human.