Not sure if this is a vailla bug, or something caused by an expac...
Don't know of any way to tell...
Anyways, Whenever i come across a ffender: ship with escorts who are also listed as offenders, the escrots AI seems to be broken, they'll escort the mothership (python/boa/whatever) but they won't attack it's targets, i can kill their mom right in front of them and they do nothing, and when it's dead they just drift or sometimes perform hostile manuevers (but no firing, just charging towards me)
Anyways, Whenever i come across a ffender: ship with escorts who are also listed as offenders, the escrots AI seems to be broken, they'll escort the mothership (python/boa/whatever) but they won't attack it's targets,
It is a known bug introduced with the new group handling in 1.73. When the main ship is attacked it sends this message to all group members, however when the main ship was part of a group, it forgets to put the escorts in such a pirate group. (Or actually the escort group was overwritten by the pirate group) And because pirates are currently the only ships that are added as group, this problem reveals itself only with pirates.
Thargoids attacking each other is a long-standing issue, and has to do with the way in which they are looking for their next target.
However, I thought this had been fixed at a certain point? - There may remain the "friendly fire" issue, which is also a long-standing problem in Oolite.