I have a lot of small forward carriers that tend to get themselves killed.
Lately I’m finding groups of fighters stuck where those carriers died, circling that point of space until they run out of fuel, at which point they go to refuel at another carrier and then go back to the original point in space. They will never regain normal behavior.
Perhaps it’s related to the squad leader dying in the carrier? I almost always use some form of ‘stick together’.