You have probably not read the tooltip that explain how this work. When a fleet is set to manual it will respond to threats in the same system if it is set to respond to such things (at system of above) in the "Fleet Engagement Range" dropdown menu of the fleet.Omnius wrote: Mon Jul 08, 2024 1:15 pm I've seen somewhere where some have complained that manually controlled fleets sometimes go on attack missions without human orders to do so. I had a small fleet near my home colony go off and attack an Outlaws Nest in my home system without me ordering it to. Actually I had several instances of my manually controlled fleet going beserk making an attack I didn't order against that Outlaw's Nest. I do not want my fleets, or ships, on manual control going off doing something I didn't order them to do. If I wanted the Artificial Ignorance controlling my fleets or ships I'd set them to computer control.
You can set this to say nearby, that means the fleet will only ever respond to threats that are within about 5000 range.
Don't set your fleets to "do not engage" they will not even defend themselves if you do.
This is clearly not a bug but intended behaviour.