Why won't my fighter drones fight? X3TC

[Cascinova]

So I saw this hyperion vanguard that I wanted to steal today. I had 12 fighter drones I wanted to use to take down it's shields. First I tried using the SHIFT F7 or drones attack command, and that didnt work, kept saying they are unavailable. So I dumped them out manually then commanded them to attack, and they just swarmed around and did nothing. I tried with MARS as well, and told them to attack sheilds, yet they just swarmed and didnt fire a shot. I tried setting global paranid to foe (because we are friends now), but that did nothing.

Finally out of frustration I started shooting myself, and finally he (the HPV) turns red and my drones all fly away! WTF am I doing wrong?

[crendesmus]

first you eject the fight drones out your cargo hold. then you com them and give them whatever order you want to give them.

[Omini]

Your drones became sentient and got scared of the sight of a hostile HPV.

On a more related and serious note, are you using any mods or the like?

[TTD]

He is using MARS for a start.
Maybe another script or mod is messing with that