I hate disguise mechanics

[LameFox]

I keep factions I don't want to aggro set to "defensive" at all times. Recently, I was doing the TOA missions and became hostile to VIG, as you do. I decided to camp their gates to weaken their economy. I put fleets at the gates and set VIG back to "default".

Only now, I keep aggroing MIN ravens. Even after it drops the disguise and returns to MIN, it remains hostile, and my gate camp interceptors attack it. MIN are marked as "defensive" and I'm pretty sure those ravens just flee without firing a shot. Yet they get chased down and killed anyway. I'm deciding whether to micro my MIN rep or just delete this save because I'm that tired of the bugs every time I play this game.

Meanwhile, if I ever set up ships to hunt down SCA going after traders, they drop aggro all the time like it was nothing. I've even watched them on the map sometimes and seen them turn red and then drop aggro the next second.

Why does this system seem to always work in whatever way sucks the most for the player?

[PV_]

SCA ships are in enemy territory commonly and switch cover forth and back thereby dropping off aggro (the pirate themselves remains hostile). I didn't watch Ravens much but most likely they only use cover at VIG territory since its hostile space and switch cover off in home area. That is why your ships keep pursuing them.

[LameFox]

How would SCA remain hostile? They are only temp hostile to begin with. If it disguises to drop aggro and then immediately pirates something else, it will be neutral again as SCA (unless the thing it pirates is yours). It might display hostile if you have a fire override for SCA but it doesn't know that.

The ravens use cover in and sometimes out of VIG space. Not sure why on the latter, but I've seen a "VIG" raven in neutral space for whatever reason. But I'm hostile to VIG, not MIN (at least not yet—obviously I will be if this idiocy continues), and yet when they drop the disguise and display as MIN they not only remain hostile but my ships still pursue them even though I'm set defensive to MIN.

[PV_]

Hostility is temporary, ofc. And if something shown as hostile its not always actually hostile. E.g. station marked as hostile won't fire at you until you shoot first. If you order your ships to attack someone or those attack something by behavior the target won't become hostile in spite of being red on the map until first shot landed on the hull. Perhaps the pirate you're talking about was that kind "red" and went neutral after switching spoofing.

Raven disguise in MIN space may be caused by some VIG ships nearby as it worked with Yaki plot Moreya/Katana towards XEN/YAK ships before the update. Your neutral relations with MIN, doesn't matter at this case. You've attacked their ship and got temp relation drop. There is space for improvements, but so far working as intended.

Defensive fire override is more about non-hostile relations. If the target is already "red" military ships with behavior will attack it, the only exception I know is Xenon. If set to not attack machine transports - player's ships will actually ignore them. I've reported the issue, but it seems far from being in priority list.

[LameFox]

In this case what's intended seems stupid and counter-intuitive on multiple fronts.

-A faction ship that wilfully takes a hostile disguise to pass by its enemies should not remain hostile due to being fired on while disguised. It literally brought this on itself.

-Likewise the defensive fire override does not work as it is written if it treats a ship as an attacker for simply having hostile thoughts. That isn't what anyone choosing something described as "defend only" is going to want. It might make sense mechanically but that's not what those words mean to a human.

-Also, frankly disguising in the first place should rely on not being seen during the transition. This is another one of those things that only makes sense to a computer, and is a big part of what makes the SCA ships so grating.

[PV_]

I suppose devs are aware of the problem. Not 100% sure though. You can check here and there.