When a player has a diplomat specialists will be returned to the nearest outpost. However, if someone attacks that returning sub or this was the result of sub-to-sub combat then the returning sub jumps a long distance away first. Pictures to follow.
Subs on the right side have 119 and 55 respectively. The purple sub in image 2 way over on the left side is where it ended up being after it lost the sub-to-sub battle.
hey fiddler, that was a bug with how the diplomat works. we've fixed it since, so any games that were started more recently should not exhibit this behavior.