My fleet does not attack

[Shrimp]

I have a problem and I can't solve it. Everytime I select my corvette task force and right click onto an enemy, it won't attack. The fleet stance is set to aggressive. X button mashing does not help.

If it helps you to answer my question, I use laser weapons and they show up in the slots in my ship designer. I also assigned a leader to the unit. But the status of my task force is always only "following", when I click onto an enemy. Why? I feel really stupid.

They shoot back, when they are directly attacked though. But when pirates only attack my mining stations, my task force will only follow them through the whole galaxy.

[Oneeyed]

I ran into somthing similar. My fleet stance was aggressive and I can attack neutrals but when I try to attack a neutral faction by using right click or using the shortcut nothing happens. Then it's identical what you have described: It only sets the status of my fleet to "following".

Is it a bug or do I miss something?

[Shrimp]

It works now, when the other party's fleet is hostile. But actually you are able to attack neutral fleets. It just tells you that attacking means declaring war and you have to confirm your choice again.

This worked for my friend, but this bubble never popped up for me. I mean, sometimes you have to be able to attack in advance, because you don't want to wait until they open fire.

What are your ethics? I took Pacifist. Perhaps this has something to do with it? So that I am not allowed to shoot first at neutral fleets?

[Oneeyed]

As pacifist you can not attack neutrals because you have the policy active that your stance is defensive. I'm not sure if you can change it if you are a pacifist.

I play as fanatical militarist and I have the stance set to aggressive which means you can attack neutrals.

But when I click on these special neutrals to attack them nothing happens at all. I don't get the pop up question if I want a neutral faction. But this happens only to one of the neutrals. All other neutrals I can attack without any problems.

The neutrals I am refering to are called spaceborn organics and are some kind of crystals. I suppose a subfaction of the crystals because I can attack all other crystals in the game.

The ones I cannot attack are for some reason neutral towards me despite the game files set all crystals to enemies at game start. And I think that is the problem.

[Shrimp]

I can also set the stance to aggressive as Pacifist. I did and I declared war and won. The "Pacifist" does only influence the war happiness.

"But when I click on these special neutrals to attack them nothing happens at all."
Yes, we have the same bug. It should be a bug.

[Shrimp]

The next time it happens, I make a save and report the bug to the paradox forum.

[Oneeyed]

Yes. That sounds good. I play heavily modded so they won't even look into it.

[Shrimp]

Could you check whether your "First Contact protocol" (Policies) is set to peaceful instead of aggressive?

[Oneeyed]

It's set to aggressive. I never changed it because I like the option to attack neutrals.