I seem to have a weird bug:
if there is a system-wide bounty to kill "pirates" in a system clearly plagued by ordinary pirates - sometimes to the extent of having 5 or more pirate fleets clogging up the jump points, I get zero money or reputation increases from the faction when killing normal pirates.
it seemed to work early in game when I did a bounty for one of the core factions. but twice now, one time Mayasuran Navy and another Diable avionics, I get no rewards.
first time I encountered this, I just assumed they were somehow in league with pirates even though the INTEL panel showed nothing, but even then it seemed the pirates were harassing trade and putting the colonies in that system in trouble. but I did not stick around to watch too much
this time, the pirates attacked a neutral scavenger fleet that had just concluded trade on the colony. and the supposed "enemy" factions were nowhere to be seen, but the colony had insane prices for many items - meaning they were clearly suffering from the blockade.
the pirates do *not* show as official enemies in the INTEL faction info. but they should still yield bounties, if they're the ones blockading the colony.
it is either a bug in how factions determine who is messing with them, even in a case where there are swarms of pirate fleets in shouting distance from the station.
the pirates never attacked the station directly, but that could have been because it's a faction capital with two or three massive fleets protecting it.
the whole situation is weird and counterintuitive.
it could also be a bug in how the player gets rewarded -- maybe the base game implicitely rewards bounties, and nex does it based on hostility, but did not implement that pirates are kinda always hostiles, also implicitely unless they're allied or something?
the whole thing seems so weird.
one thing is for sure: the scavenger fleet that the pirates bounced on seemed to come from the colony. or was in system and tried to leave. and the colony is not even half a screen from the jump point. if the scavengers were hostile to the colony, the massive faction fleets would have just killed them.
there was a tiny neutral fleet of just a few ships also trying to leave and the pirates attacked that too
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I watched a bit more and one of the diable fleets went through the jump portal and seemed to guard the entrance. the pirates there did not engage it, and vice versa. the system fleet would be too big for pirates to attack. it seemed the pirates had faster ships on average, so maybe the system fleet could not catch them? but it did not even try to boost.
the impression I got was that they were allies. but then the system would be fine and not under extreme prices with clear massive oversupply of many goods, meaning no trade ships would come in due to the pirate blockade
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edit: Diable just posted a bounty for the pirate base blockading their system
(was afk a lot, so not long ingame after this post)
that proves there is an issue with the game managing bounty rewards and maybe even how system fleets deal with pirates in some edge cases