Friendly fire making game unplayable for me

[Nemnori]

What is going on with friendly fire?
I am a late game player. I build, trade, leave carriers at gates to protect other races, have a large trading fleet and spend most of the time my game is building to read a book. It is very relaxing.
Right about when the update changing shield energy to unlink it from boost, I started getting races going red.
I changed fire authorization. I changed turret status. I installed the friendly fire mod. Still, races going to red.
I'm not sure what changed, but the game has been unplayable for me. I used to play almost every day, but it has been over a month since I have logged on.
I do see others talking about this on other platforms. I have been patiently waiting for a solution, but nothing yet.
I just want to sit back, build and trade and periodically do some things in the game while I read my books.
Anyone else having this problem? Anyone have advice on how to fix this?
If egosoft finds this, please, I've been playing since x2. I absolutely love this series. It is like a good old friend. Please stop my traders from agroing. Please let my medium ships, from a carrier, protect a area around a gate without agroing. At least don't let the police and sector defense from other races get pissed off when all I'm doing is protecting their sector from xenon.
Until then, the game is just unplayable for me.

[vvvvvvvv]

Anyone else having this problem? Anyone have advice on how to fix this?

For fast projectile turrets: Attack fighters first.
For plasma turrets: "Attack only capitals"
Do not use flak.
Do not ever use flak on station turrets.
Beam turrets almost never miss and do not cause friendly fire.

Verify in journal that enemies are not going red because one of the captains has illegal items in inventory or stimulants in cargo.
If you're not physically in the sector (it is OOS), friendly fire does not happen.

In my experience, friendly fire situation drastically improved in 7.50. I had games that lasted days without a single friendly fire incident. So if you have races going red, and have friendly fire mod installed it could be be something else and not friendly fire causing hostilities.

[LameFox]

Pretty sure someone in here had their beams FF before, though I forget how it happened.

In my experience the #1 cause of friendly fire that escalates into conflict is small ships or drones ramming a larger target and being killed by fire incoming to that target. It's survived all their FF changes to date because it involves an actual kill, and the ramming of targets during attack runs is still pretty frequent.

[Falcrack]

Friendly fire turning allies hostile is the thing that more than anything else causes me to want to quit the game. It is maddening that some turret from some NPC controlled ship struck an allied ship, and before I know it, my fighters are attacking the other ships which were allied.

I've said it many times before, I will say it again. Stray shots from turrets (where the turrets are hitting things they did not originally target), and stray shots from main guns of ai piloted ships (where ai fired main gun and hit something they were not targetting) should result in NO REP LOSS AT ALL.

It really makes the game unfun when I cannot join in a large fight with an ally against a common enemy without a near guarantee that at some point, friendly fire will cause my ships to eventually start fighting my ally as well.

If the player fires main guns and hits ships, I'm fine with rep loss. If I order my NPCs to attack a target, and they hit it, rep loss is fine there too. Any time a hit from a turret hits the intended target is also a legitimate cause for rep loss.

[Scoob]

I was basically forced - if I wanted to keep playing - to install the "Apologise for attack" mod. I'm defending a gate from invading Xenon, doing a darn good job of it too, when an allied fleet shows up to "help". My ships are getting hit by them more than I hit theirs. They've even DESTROYED some of my ships with totally careless volleys of heavy fire. I've seen Destroyers of mine take full broadsides - or the X4 equivalent - from an "allied" destroyer, trying to shoot a fighter. I mean, I know when not to fire if there's a friendly ship in the way, my allies it seems do not lol. A stray shot when a ship flies through a volley of fire already on the way, fine, it happens. Shots fired when a mutual foe is already behind a friendly, no.

The reason I installed a mod to, if not fix, certainly work-around this issue was the reloads. Great battle, enemy pushed back, one (or more) of my ship's shots hits one of theirs - after my fleet ignoring DOZENS of hits from them - and instant hostility cascade of doom. The "Apologise for attack" mod allows me to comm an agro'd allied ship and say sorry, this usually de-escalates. Irksome, yes, but better than rewinding the entire encounter via a reload.

The game NEEDS to make more allowances when there's a bit of a furball going on. MY ships totally IGNORE friendly fire, allies need to do the same if from a turrets or a solely AI-controlled ship.

Thought: perhaps it's a pattern, perhaps not. However, when accidental shots occur the target often isn't obscured / blocked by a friendly in terms of direct LoS. However, due to how targets are led, the projectile IS certainly going to hit the wrong target. I.e. I can see the target is in perfect LoS of the firing turret, however, said turret has to lead the target which takes the projectile into another ship.

Note: additionally, Turrets and ships using fixed weapons need to be more aware of what's behind their target. I.e. I was on the Deck of a Behemoth E, it's Fighters were docked on the Pads. Some Xenon Fighters flew over me - from my perspective standing on the dock - which were between myself and an allied ship. A load of L-Plasma Turret shots splashed over that dock, attempting to shoot that Xenon and failing badly. Result? Two lost fighters of MINE.

As mentioned, my ships hit friendlies far far less than they hit me. I do have turrets set appropriately, Missiles First / Capitals first depending on the weapon. However, I of course DO want my ship's heavy turrets to have a go at other targets if they don't have a viable Capital Ship target. I'm leaving DPS off the board if I don't. Many a time, a "lucky" hit from a heavy turrets on a Fighter or Corvette has made quick work of things.

The quickest "fix" here is to turn off friendly fire for the player as it's turned off against the player. Perhaps not perfect, but significantly better than constantly having to reload during an otherwise FUN battle due to the hostility cascade of doom when an ally goes agro. Note: Fire Control doesn't help prevent this, once a ship goes hostile, even the most passive turret setting (aside from OFF) WILL shoot that now agro'd "friendly".

[Falcrack]

Devs, please read the walls of text, and understand that friendly fire rep loss and the resulting aggro between allies is a MAJOR issue that needs to be addressed. Your past efforts to address it were frankly insufficient.