My "bug report"

I'm posting this here to see if this is a bug or a 'feature' I haven't figured out yet.

Version 1.17
I have four ships, each with one drone launcher and one drone a piece. At the beginning of combat, I launch all four drones. 2 auto-target on the nearest enemy ship and 2 are inexplicably ordered to retreat. I pause the battle and look at them and find that the two fleeing drones have no supply. I check the other two and find that they are fine and have full supply. The ships they were launched from have not had their supplies reduced at all and still operate normally.

Now the punchline is that I can run the battle now with everything on computer control and after selecting the two fleeing drones I can have them ram enemy ships anyway (I have to fight the computer control that constantly makes them want to flee) and they account for two kills.

I find it hard to believe that this is a feature, but is there something I'm supposed to be doing that I'm not? I had checked the drones I loaded onto those ships and they were full when they went in. I've tried this other times and it seems pretty much all the time, half my drones are supplied and half aren't. If I just keep all my drones in space, they all function normally, just like spacecraft (except the exploding part)

Yes, I have CT engines and plenty of supply capacity. Ordinance doesn't seem to matter one way or the other though (other than those without ordinance don't explode unless they ram a target under manual control).

What's up?