Check the notes on your map, many systems have quite good police, so you don't have to watch out for pirates, but if you attack a trader unprovoked, and it gets away... then you will have a bounty placed on your head by the police, and will be attacked. Also, the ai does wait for you to have the disadvantage of being under time compression, so that pattern is normal for trying to collect a bounty. Pirates would leave very far beyond the reach of your short-range radar, if that much.
Didn't mention it before, but I know that at least Elite Plus, Frontier Elite II, and Frontier: First Encounters, are not actual abandonware, they are instead freeware that is still acknowledged by their creators. (though it was FFE was made freeware less than a year ago) I don't know which other versions and ports are also still acknowledged, but of these three I am sure.
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