Autonomous iron age ballistas realism.. lol

The player targeting adds nothing (I'd expect something like 0.01% of the playerbase to do PvP) and makes the default target everything mode mostly useless. I can kinda get what the devs were thinking making it like that and since then hanging on to the original idea, but honestly in practice it's just worse in all respects than not targeting players.

Accidental damage when the player is in-between a shot and its target is fine.

Ballistas don't necessarily suck though. But their low range and arc means knowing if they will fire at all somewhat iffy. Especially since you can't run in front of it in Everything mode and most enemies will close in beyond its arc very fast.