Bug recovering fighters outside battle crashes game

It feels like a LOT is NOT explained about this game, and while I enjoy the surprises the tech tree hands out, I'd prefer a walk-through that covers all basic operations in the game...

So I launched fighters from a planet, then I had my Light carrier in orbit try recovering them - funny, no matter how high I put the count (10, 100,...) there's always one fighter left. When I click on it specifically and click Recover, the game crashes! So I tried Recovering one-by-one, and the game crashes always on the 3rd click. I haven't bothered trying this in unlimited circumstances, but I do have a saved game which always exhibits this behaviour.

Later I determined that fighters are cargo and can be moved with that interface instead of the Launch/Recover interface. It seems like I had crashing problems there too - always that remaining fighter killed the game (ie. Windows error dialog comes up "Access violation at address..." with game smaller windowed in background, no visuals but audio playing).

Any help here?