Enemy ships chase immune freighters

While playing a game, I was getting slaughtered as usual. The Altarians were pummeling me, even though I was good. Anyhow, the United Planets council came up and the issue at hand was the one where you pay a certain percentage of trade to protect all freighters from attack. Then things started getting weird. First off, the vote was for something like 25% of trade or some astronomically high number like that. But the actual deduction and the reported deduction on another screen was 1%. Additionally, the Altarians sent their battleships and dreadnoughts agaisnt my little freighters. However, they could not attack them. By the end of the war, the Altarians had about four ships shadowing each of my mini-freighters. I ended up surving a war I had no reason to survive. Any info on this?