Bug? Or 'Q'-like NPR (Both?)(Spoilers?)

[Coryen (OP)]

(Using 4.82, btw)
So, in fooling around in SM mode to get my barrings, (Figuring out how to design and deploy fighters, and stuff) I come across a new system with a thermal contact on an asteroid. Neat, lets go check it out... Then this:

'4th March 2025 08:59:01,Washington,Shields Detected! Strength 18000  Active Sensor S336/R100 (New)'

Now, the first thing I thought: "It's over 9000!" If that 'strength' means shield strength, I'm screwed.
Turns out, I wasn't far off...

'4th March 2025 10:25:31,Washington, hit by 397 points of damage from Ramming Attack'

Ramming attack?!? 397 damage? Screw lasers, Next game I wanna shoot asteroids at ships!
I go to shoot back, but on my combat window, no contacts are present. Odd? Maybe I need to mark these aliens as hostile. I go to alien diplomacy screen... Nothing listed. At all. WTF. Can't make peace, can't shoot back. They destroyed my engines in their first attack.
Well, I guess I didn't need those engines...

'4th March 2025 10:25:36,Washington,Archangel hit by 1200 points of damage from Ramming Attack'

Ok, that's freaking ridiculous. I may not know how this games mechanics work, But I am pretty sure 1200 damage would completely disintegrate some of my battle cruisers. (Which had ~10 armor)

In a desperate attempt to figure out what is going on, I sent a full-on battle fleet to that system to fight these deity-level aliens. (Who seemingly cheat better than I do)
Unfortunately, I get greeted by the most annoying thing ever on my return to the system:
"Error in Updateallsensors; Error 6; Overflow"
And suddenly there are about 80 alien ships in the system, all ~800 tons. (Except for a few 6000 ton ships and one 60000 ton ship) Also, they now show up on my diplomacy screen. Which would be convenient, except after every time update, I get spammed with that overflow error, seemingly for each alien ship.

I know the overflow error is a bug, but the others? 18000 strength shields? (Am I reading that right?) 1200 damage ramming maneuvers (I don't even know how to ram someone...) and the sudden space-force spam.

[Andrew]

This one is not a bug in the program.
The 18,000 shield alien contact is real.
Precursor ships can also ram if they have fired off their missiles the 18,000 shield ship I don't think rams and anyway it is very slow but you could have encountered precursors and the other in the same system I suppose.
The ramming is very innacurate

[Rathos]

I've been having the Update all sensors error as well. It happens when you have your active sensors turned on and they are huge, at least that is what seems to cause it for me.

The reason you couldn't see or target the enemy ship was because you only saw him on passive sensors, you need active ones to target with fire control.

Ramming? New things all the time...I didn't even know you COULD ram other ship. Neat!

Those shields are really that strong its not a bug.

I ran into those guys as well, but my 750 thousand ton missile cruiser managed to send enough MIRV missile packs at them to vaporize'em.

The big ship took something like 5000 missiles (about 550 of my MIRV-9 packs) total to blow up  

Although I had to fight about 200 of their small 800 ton fighters.

Oh and there probably is another type of ship you haven't seen yet there too =)

[Andrew]

Ramming? New things all the time...I didn't even know you COULD ram other ship. Neat!

Only precursors ram

[Steve Walmsley]

The 18,000 strength shield contact is actually strength 600 shields. For the purposes of EM detection, the EM signature of shields is equal to 30x their strength.

Steve