Possible Bug? Escorts not escorting

[Cpt. H. Elmes]

Not sure if this is a bug or not but:

I had a medium freighter which I assigned 2 Discoverers and a Nova to escort it as pirates became a real problem in Argon Prime where it was operating. The escorts, however, would fly off to the freighter's destination, instead of follow it. So the freighter was killed with no support, as it's escorts were sitting waiting at the station instead of escorting.

I even tried changing formations, after taking ages to find how to find ship behaviour settings, but they still flew off ahead to the freighter's destination instead of escorting it.