Speaking of the bizarre, I've seen some unusual things happening with the new faction raids. (Or at least I think the raids are new - either that or I just didn't notice the factions raiding before because they were too busy launching invasions instead...)
The first scenario involved a fleet that I decided to follow because they flew right by me on their way to raiding the Hegemony (who really disliked me at the time). I tailed them all the way to their target system where they promptly jumped in, declared the raid a failure, jumped back out, and flew home. At first, I thought maybe there was a massive fleet that intercepted them on the other side, so I traveled backwards in time (i.e. reloaded the last save) and jumped ahead of them to clear the way. There were no hostile ships this time though, and a few seconds later the raid fleet jumped in, immediately declared the raid a failure again, and jumped back out as I sat there shaking my head. My only explanation is that maybe the fleet I followed was a straggler and the rest of the raid force arrived days earlier and got crushed before we even got a chance to help.
The second scenario involved a raid launched by a very unexpected faction:
I was way out in the far reaches of the sector at the time, so I missed the raid, but I did stumble upon the retreating force after they too failed to raid the evil Hegemony. I somehow managed to dodge the scary fleets (plural!) as they flew past, and discretely tailed them back to a nearby system with a warning beacon. I didn't follow, having already learned in a previous life that the system in question is the special "challenge" system generated by the Tyrador Safeguard Coalition mod. I'm not sure if it's intentional that this particular faction can launch raids (or if it's somehow a side effect of this particular system), but it certainly caught me by surprise...