Northerner Early test of a very low level anti kite thoughts? My thinking is the best way to stop a problem is stopping it before it becomes a problem.
I think the best way may be to not start things. You have kites in the early enemies pool. That encourages the player to respond in kind because kites are the easiest way to deal with kites without sacrificing the ability to fight other things.
They're also frustrating and not fun and encourage abusing the AI because the way to beat them if you encounter them not already having equal range or two ships, is to spawn in a second ship and if the player doesn't have an anti-kite in his library the way to get it into range is for the first ship to start running away and forcing the kite to chase it past the second ship. This encourages breaking the gentlemans' agreement of not deliberately abusing the AI. They should probably be avoided on the NPC list.
As a clarification, the AI will try to use anything with just medium range weapons (cannons, ion beams) as a kite against anything with a mixed armament that includes short range weapons. Just because you think it's supposed to be a brawler (with a name like pugilist I don't think you intended a kite) doesn't mean it doesn't actually operate as a kite under AI control.