Scan bug ? scanning hostile pirates turn them friendly

[coconutz55]

I'm playing on the last version of X3AP (steam), in vanilla (no mod at all), in french, with the terran commander start.

I'm doing the shady business plot, where you have to provide stuff to Ho t'Sht, there are a lot of pirates patrolling the area (that's a pirate territory).
My rep with pirates is neither good (attack/defend missions where they are involved) nor bad (missions + trading), so they usually ignore me but, in this case, they are all hostile and nearly every ship attack my ship.

So, I was looking for spaceflies and I tried to scan some of them. Just after the scan, a small squad (M3 + 2 M4) turn blue and stop firing. I repeat the scan on other and each time they turn friendly. I have tried in another sector, Mercenaries Rift, and that's still working, with bigger effect, scanning 2 M3 turn the whole squad with M7, 2-3 M6, ~20 M5-M3 in friendly. I have seen an hostile TM launch a friendly squad on me (very usefull).

I think that is a bug, I don't really know how it works.

[Alan Phipps]

Working as intended. It is a known method of deterring some Pirate attacks when your Pirate rep is borderline for their ships being red or blue to you. I think it reflects that ship scanning without permission is a Pirate-type of action that earns some slight respect from other Pirate pilots. Some Pirate ships will always be red to you, no matter your Pirate rep or whether you scan them though. Moving to Universe (Gameplay) forum for exposure to more players.

[vukica]

Working as intended. It is a known method of deterring some Pirate attacks when your Pirate rep is borderline for their ships being red or blue to you. I think it reflects that ship scanning without permission is a Pirate-type of action that earns some slight respect from other Pirate pilots. Some Pirate ships will always be red to you, no matter your Pirate rep or whether you scan them though. Moving to Universe (Gameplay) forum for exposure to more players.

wow... it's a feature

been playing X games since release of X2 and never noticed this

cool. anything else, maybe?

[Infekted]

The other thing is that even if they are red, it doesn't mean they will automatically attack you. At top pirate rank, there are still a fair few red pirates floating around but they almost never attack you. You can go and scan some of them blue, but not all.
Hostilities are quite often started by your ships, if the red pirates get near them whilst they are on some kind of defend/attack orders.