I'm not sure if this is a bug, but it seems peculiar, and/or maybe I'm having observational issues.

It seems like I can put a warship in sentry mode and it will wake up if minifreighters on a trade route get within sensor range.

This is somewhat annoying since the minfreighters are not military vessels.  I would think sentry mode would cause the ship to wake up when something potentiall threatening is near, not just when any ship, especially an automated minifreighter that isn't even really a ship (for combat puposes), passes by.

I don't think it's as simple as a real ship passing by and out of visible range because this happens a LOT.

It'd be pretty slick if you sentry mode could be configured or had options - so you could say - don't wake me unless a transport from anyone gets within range or a ship from someone I'm at war with gets within range.

Because with there being zero respect for boundries you can easily have people flying all over your part of the galaxy and you don't really need to have sentries awakened for routine traffic.