Neutral freighters attacking me

[Deomrve]

I'm experiencing something that I think is odd. I have a fleet of ships protecting one of my more important systems and every neutral freighter that comes near the planet they are parked at. By parked I mean the fleet has no mission and is relatively close to a planet and is motionless. Every neutral freighter wants blow my fleet out of space. It's kinda humorous seeing about 20+ freighters encircling my fleet and when I decide to blow one of them away they run off. Now I know that all these freighters are not doing business with my planet, which means I'm getting no income from them. Anybody else have this happen? Is so how did you get them to stop and get back to trading? I tried blowing away the offending critters but then more just came and did the same thing. Also if you blow away these freighter that attack you without provocation does it hurt your reputation.

[Rustyallan]

Your reputation is probably low and they don't like you.  Therefor they attack you and you are forced to blow them up, which lowers your reputation so that your reputation is lower and they don't like you even more.

Check your reputation level and see where it's at?

Attacking anyone without a declaration of war will ruin your reputation.

[Deomrve]

I think I was dubious at the time, but how do you declare war on independent traders? These are freighters that have no affiliation with any empire.

[Rustyallan]

You can't declare war on them... which is why you take a reputation hit for attacking neutrals and invading neutral colonies.

[Deomrve]

The problem is the independent neutrals only attack one frigate in one system only. All other ships and fleets in any other system were left alone. Just the one ship in one system.

[Rustyallan]

Sounds like that one frigate attacked or hit a neutral by accident then.  Try sending it for a retrofit.  or at least out of that system.