Hostility flagging of NPCs (or the lack of it)

[allenr316]

Anyone else having an issue with attacking NPCs not being flagged as hostile unless they're in melee attack range? I've had many, many times where I have a group of my squad manning crossbows around my gate, a group of starving farmers / vagrant outlaws shows up, and proceed to pummel my gates into oblivion. My crossbow guys apparently think smashing gates is fine because they don't retaliate in any way until I manually tell them to attack, or until the offending groups commit a "crime" by stealing something... then its time to open fire. Very irritating in general, but also frustrating in that it really makes exploring away from my base much more challenging knowing that its very vulnerable because the defenders won't... you know... defend.