Apologies if this sounds a bit stilted! I’m trying to be as precise as possible. It’s a problem that’s easily reproducible in the deployment screen.
I’ve just set up a cruiser with 3 frigates in a line in front of it. This formation was repeated underneath that row, to give a grid of 3 rows with 4 ships each (cruiser, frigate x3).
With the top three frigates selected, I tried to issue a formation order linked to the cruiser behind them. The correct line appeared (horizontally back to the cruiser) and formation appears in the order list - but no target ship name appears in the dialog box, leaving just the option to select another target or delete the order. Selecting another target doesn’t work, though. Nor does deleting the order - the dialog disappears but the order’s still there in the list. After this, no other orders can be deleted from the order menu either.
Incidentally, this doesn’t happen if the ships aren’t closely packed like that - a single row works every time.
(update) unselecting the 3 ships and then clicking on one of them clears the duff formation order. It’s then possible to select the three ships together and successfully set the formation order back to the cruiser - it only fails at the first attempt.
Hope this helps!