i have reported the hud text before, just remininding you of it. Basically I have noticed this in border patrol and advanced combat, heres what you see in advanced combat:

<hudtext>Your group needs to destroy 16 bots of any of these class types:
Fennus R-18 Guardian, Orne Guardian, ApuTech-17 Guardian, Devus D3 Guardian, Valent A-47 Assault, Prosus Assault, TyCorp Assault, Arklan Guardian</hudtext><button>Contact</button>

This is appearing on your hud and the contact button does not work in space. You also get this similar thing in border patrol, but theres obviously no button. Whilst on the note of border patrol when serco hit "target nearest enemy" it targets serco aswell, this is very annoying. I think this only happens in Deneb.

Now onto the Friendly Fire. The other day a UIT voy flew through Sedina and I shot at it since I could now, they voy did not shoot back at me, the voy did keep heading to its destination though. I shot at a different convoy Inebuis iirc and they did shoot back, then as expected the escort vults and cents came after me.

Does that <hudtext> text show up in the mission log like it's supposed to?

yes and in advanced combats the 'contact' button appears only when docked.