I've made a note for the devs. Thanks for reporting.
Thanks for giving it the devs attention Island Dog 
Interesting experiment I haven't tried if you design a ship with the escort role does it then stay closer to the starbase?
In reply to econundrum1, just because you were curious, here are some screen shots and test results.
I tried 2 ships of each class, eg: Two Escort with a starbase VS 2 pirates. And again with all 6 classes, they had the same result where they fly ahead as you can see it in the pic.
And for fun I tried 2 of every ship class all together, also in the pic. they had the same behavior. I thought maybe if I mix/matched the ships they might act differently with the starbase but they didn't.
