This has been brought up many times by many people, but as of 1.30 your damaged fighters with no where to go still fly to the edge of the screen, fly very slowly and let themselves be eaten alive by the first group of enemy fighters that spot them… When this happens I get so annoyed with the game that I stop playing it for a week…
The cautious order has a use for self repairing ships or when you want to attempt to save a damaged ship from being destroyed and tipping a win to loose (of course the ships rarely survive to retreat…)
We desperately need a Repair order. One that lets us select how damaged a ship (mostly fighters) should be before it heads for the carrier (or pulls back to a range for self repair?) . If there are no carrier bays, empty or boom it ignores the Repair order. This way you could use it with the Cautious order and those that want to attempt to save a damaged fighter can and those that figure that even “one more shot” could tip the balance in battle can as well…
TFM