Rift Refugees aggression bug/oversight

[Astornautti]

Hi,

I have struggled with a bug/oversight regarding the Rift refugees since they were released. I encountered this bug in my latest playthrough today, so it's been around for a while now.

Let me explain.

Basically, the Rift refugees often just drop in on my planet with a massive fleet. Long-range sensors give no warning of an enemy fleet approaching, even though they are very clearly detected on sensors. Once they arrive, they start destroying and capturing ships, but my military ships, starbases, or the planetary defences don't always even shoot back unless they're intercepting missiles. Then they repeat this process until I've lost several fleets worth of ships.

I've been replaying a save where one of these fleets is about to arrive, and it seems completely random when my fleet, planet, or starbase recognises them as the enemy. Sometimes it works as it should (although even then I've noticed my planetary railgun batteries seem to be targeting enemy missiles and fighters over their ships, which is odd). Other times, only the defence fleet recognises the Rift refugee fleet as an enemy, but the planet launches no fighters or uses its railgun batteries. Sometimes the entire fleet starts attacking only one ship in the Rift refugee fleet and ignore all other ships. However, more often than not, the Rift refugees just start destroying my ships with no resistance from the fleet or the planet.

I've noticed that when the defending fleet correctly recognises and attacks the Rift refugee fleet as a whole (the ship order becomes "attack fleet 1" instead of "attack ship name"), the planetary defences also seem to work properly. When the defensive fleet only recognises one ship in the enemy fleet as an aggressor or tries to withdraw, they no longer always recognise the Rift refugee ships as enemies. This also seems to stop the planetary defences from shooting since they no longer recognise the Rift refugee fleet as enemies.

Sure, I could fix this just by declaring war on the Rift refugees, but that would force me to single-handedly take on the threat that's supposed to be fought against by almost all of the galaxy. This is also a bad idea, because being dogpiled by all the might of the Rift refugees without any help from the rest of the galaxy (because my empire technically started the war, thus my defence treaties don't work) can only end one way.

I suggest re-evaluating this part of the game by allowing my sensors, ships, and planets to recognise the Rift refugees as enemies by default, regardless of our diplomatic stance, thus allowing my ships to shoot back and respond accordingly to their ships and fleets as hostile forces. This problem sometimes appears with pirates, as they too are technically neutral to the player, so a pirate fleet can just suddenly appear next to a colony and raid it with no warning from the long-range sensors. I haven't tried attacking other empires' ships or assets outside of wars ever, but I suspect the same behaviour may manifest there too.

[Astornautti]

Oh, and I almost forgot. It gets even better. Sometimes the rift refugee fleet arrives at a colony, refuels from the colony in peace, and when they're done, they start attacking my assets.

[MaximKI]

The fact that your units and ships don't fire back on the Rift Refugees when attacked is a problem. We'd like a save showing this in action.