AI Escort behaviour is hyperaggressive.

[ColdSpiral]

So I've just had a save go from great to bad to worse in the space of two minutes, explicitly due to the Escort Me behaviour.

It turns out that Escort AI will turn aggressive toward any ship that fires a weapon in the direction of the ship being escorted.

This includes player-owned ships, such as a harmless salvage craft that was dismantling a wreck nearby. It was destroyed by my wingman before I could command it to go passive. I was still collecting the turrets and systems from the wreck when a faction invasion occurred.

I got caught in the crossfire, and though my shields held up I suddenly found that I had declared¹ for the invading side. That same wingman had turned on the defenders for firing in my direction. I have spent hours dragging my rep with that faction up from Bad to Friendly, and now we're sworn enemies.

 

¹Also those dialog popups - and the ones during bandit ambushes - are incredibly annoying, wrenching control away when steering, especially in the heat of battle. Can't they appear in the chat log instead?

[cepheni]

ah, that sad to hear. I will pass this on to the devs.

[GOForce3]

I too have had this problem cost me several ships and a couple of good relationships with previously friendly factions.  One of them went from Admired to Abhorrent in one horrible case of this. This erroneous behavior is the only thing that really aggravates me and something that should be patched as soon as possible.  I've found ways to deal with the other AI idiosyncrasies, so they aren't too much of a problem.

 

One of which is when an AI ship is non-responsive I found that just giving them a nudge wakes them up and they'll obey your commands again.  I also found that if any of your ships are in this non-responsive state and you jump to another sector, they won't jump with you. You'll have to "wake" them up before jumping.