This is something I've noticed the game does this, but especially for long duration games where you become the dominant power smaller factions are more than willing to go to war over your transponders, even if it gets them nuked off the face of the sector. To me, that seems a bit silly that a faction will risk complete annihilation over something akin to not having a license plate. Note that the AI also only cares about transponders when the player does it, and not when any other fleet from any other faction does it. It's really weird and jarring, doubly so when you have commission and it still happens with the commissioned faction. There needs to be some exceptions to when fleets won't bother with the transponders: You've Diplomatic Immunity (established faction with X many colonies/pop), You're working for that faction (Undercover FBI now *** off), you have good reputation with them so they'll look the other way, and of course "Ask me about my transponders and die" for pickets threatening much larger and well equipped fleets they're not able to escape from much less fight rather than doing something sensible like maintaining contact for other better equipped fleets to deal with. I guess the option to also pay off officials to look the other way for transponders would be appreciated.
