Checking the universe map awhile later shows that my builder and trader ships are all gathered at the construction site as planned. Everything is sailing perfectly smoothly. Except... this trader is taking a very long time (and distance) to "undock" from the build storage. And these other traders seem to have suffered extensive shield loss, but they can't have been boosting their shields away. And the builder ship has hull damage. And another trader has its hull at critical. Uh oh!

None of my pilots have reported any threats, and there's nothing on the message ticker about any attacks. The map shows nothing hostile in the vicinity of the station. There are no wrecks from defeated enemies, dropped wares, or other signs of concluded battle. Were my ships attacked in other sectors while enroute? What's going on?


Nope. I simply made one of the classic blunders. No, not never get involved in a land war in Asia, but rather never count on the AI to tell you if something is wrong. It turns out I built the station in the middle of a massive hazardous region which was eating the construction fleet alive. It's my fault for not having personally surveyed the area first.
But... maybe there could be some kind of a warning or alert to help handle this? Ideally, the scouting ships could've given some kind of indication but barring that, perhaps display a warning when players are creating station plots in (already explored) unsafe regions. I'd argue the pilots of the jeopardized ships should be sending alerts, but it's already precedented that AI pilots will just silently fly to their dooms in the Void and other (in)famous hazardous regions. It just seems like this type of titanic failure could be readily prevented with just a little sensible notification.
*Edited title to note potential spoilers