Whenever you dock on a ship with a pirate the pirate says his usual "wel, well well..." speech and then the game softlocks and you can't do anything. The pirate will just walk in place, and you can't interact with anything.
My current platime is about an hour but I've had this happen on as previous save that was about 40 hours long.
Version: 0.14.4.0 (Steam public test build)
Debug info:
<color=orange><b>[Exception]</b></color>: NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
GrammarUtils.GenerateString ()
GrammarUtils.GetInflectedString (System.String target, .Interaction interaction)
GrammarUtils.GenerateDescription (.Interaction interaction, Boolean log)
Interaction.ApplyLogging (System.String strOwner, Boolean bTraitSuffix)
CondOwner.EndTurn ()
CondOwner.UpdateManual (Int32 maxRepeats)
CrewSim.UpdateICOs ()
CrewSim.AdvanceSim (Single fDelta)
CrewSim.Update ()
- repeated infinitely
No mods or game changes
Not sure if this affects all NPCs as I've only attacked pirates.