Is this an NPC skill thing, or are AI just bad?

[LameFox]

I hired a teladi to fly my discoverer (mostly in case I need to salvage anything). He's not technically a captain, because the entire universe is just engineers. Nonetheless, I'm astounded by how useless he is.

-thinks the fastest way around an obstacle is to fly directly into it, meld through the wall, and get stuck inside.
-fires weapons in a cone around his target, as if afraid to hurt it.
-has taken minutes (!!!) to make a 90 degree turn in one of the smallest ships in the game.

As I type this he's fighting a Xenon M, it's been going on for some time now. It was nearly dead when I told him to attack it, and minutes later it's still nearly dead. Lucky for him it's just as bad as he is, so I can tab out to write forum posts. If this is because he started out as an engineer, I really think the base skill level needs rebalancing. Nobody should be this terrible at anything. It's like he flies with his face.

Unfortunately I can't find any not-engineers to test this.