The TEC Rebels are unplayable in online multiplayer!

This just sounds like the Insurgency tech kicking in, not really any reason your ally should be immune to that, especially if it was some of the AI players that had researched it. Although I would agree that if an allied player was the one with Insurgency, it should not affect you (which may or may not be the case now, I have no idea)

Just build 2 - 3 hangar defenses, that usually can handle all of the insurgents. 2 Fighters 2-4 Bombers.

Or just both play as TEC Rebels next time and make sure you research the TAR and Pirate Mercenaries techs at the same time so you don't have to be bothered with destroying those little Rebels...

It annoyed my friend to the point where either we both play TEC Rebels, or neither of us play them. It really sucks because we have different play styles, so we never agree on the same race.

It should make sense that any abilities/perks of one race should not damage your allies....

If rebels 'threw their lot' in with me and attacked my ally, the first thing I would do is kick them out of the agreement...

That is a severely poor excuse. Moving on to the OP are you sure one of the enemy TEC did not research insurgency?

I think stardock needs to make some things clear with the TAR ability as i've been confused by some things as well.

If it is TEC-R vs TEC-R and both get TAR is neutrals and pirates useless that game? If so they should fix this by making the Neutrals around the planet owned by a player literally aligned with that player and his allies.

Kind of like what I said above if a TEC-R is allied with another player does his neutrals attack his allies.

If both players are TEC rebels local militia won't attack either of them, the pirate base becomes useless and neither faction can put up bounty (btw, even if I use carmic retribution to put bounty on the rebel won't be attacked. No problem with me, but if the pirates won't attack their allies when they have the most bounty on their heads WHY CAN'T I PUT UP BOUNTY FOR THEM THE NORMAL WAY? It's a great incentive in FFA games to have other players attack your neighbor instead of you).

What the OP experienced was one (more likely: multiple) TEC Loyalist(s) using Insurgents (tier 8 in the civilan research, at the end of the culture string). The TEC rebel pirate and milita reinforcements are NOT neutral, they belong to the TEC rebel player and only appear in the players gravitywells, not in the wells of allies.

You cannot help your friend with cleaning his gravitywells (because the Insurgents are neutral to you), and if you want to have an envoy of your friend in your gravitywell you will have to ask him to place a Starbase there, because the neutral insurgents on your planet WILL ATTACK HIS ENVOY.

TAR still needs fixing, they need to think about a solution for envoys, insurgents clogging up your planets and a problem others experienced where some neutral factions wouldn't be neutral at all. However the insurgent attacks on your friend are not TARs fault.

No logic doesen't have to make sense when it comes to game balance. Being hit by an enemy insurgency is fine, being hit by pirates is fine. Im asking if the ally however has insurgents under his control, under his own planet because he researched TAR, attacking his ally going through his territory that would be rather dumb.

TAR is very vague about what it does outside of making neutrals and pirates allies.

The ships that become under your direct control (those are the Pirate Mercs) will never attack your allies because they are converted to ships of your side, meaning the AI does not have any control over them so they are unable to attack your allies like all your other ships. Also, the rebel ships spawned by TAR won't appear in your allies' gravity wells. Only the insurgents will, even if they are spawned by your researched tech.

What does TAR stand for?

Insurgents that have spawned due to your OWN research should either not attack your allies, or they shouldnt spawn in their gravity wells.

I wish there was a way to 'un-research' the tech, because the insurgents were making the game impossible for my friend, 3 hours in.

Truce Amongst Rogues.

As has been said, it's possible that an enemy TEC player researched Insurgency, which causes rebels to randomly stage revolts on enemy worlds.

Also I'm going to note I don't think I've ever experienced insurgents popping up on my worlds when TEC allies have had the tech in previous games, not sure about Rebellion.

In trinity the Insurgents did not attack your allies. I still don't have any idea what Changs ally was being attacked by. Maybe they were playing against other TEC opponents as well... That would explain everything.

While I dont have a lot of experience with pirate mercenaries, this does sound like Insurgency from an enemy TEC player.  As I understand, TEC rebels actually have to summon pirates now from the broadcast center.

While hangars do the trick, if your enemies have teched up that far, you and your ally should think about putting up starbases with auxiliary govt/enduring devotion on all of your planets in case they start building novaliths.  its expensive but you can take advantage of the trade expansions and Induced Reverence for Advent so that can help justify the cost.

Now that I think about it, its quite possible that the Insurgents cropping up in my allies worlds were in fact due to the enemy factions... I cant remember if any of them were TEC rebels, but with only 4 races on offer in the beta, the odds are quite high that one of them was.

Insurgency is researchable by TEC Loyalists as well as TEC Rebels, it's old tech, like, original Sins old.

you should be able to give missions to them like you would any other player... i mean if you "allied" with them shouldnt they count as a neutral player? sorta a hes always there and hes a bitch kinda of thing. anyone get what i mean?