[dmm]

Baron, that's a great idea! Hope it will get implemented eventually. It would be cool to establish a base at the limits of your colonizer ships, then have that base build escorts for exploration. Also, it would help with defense in the early game -- you could make lots of escorts quickly. An enemy without long-range sensors wouldn't know if the fleet on your outpost was 4 escorts or 4 destroyers, so he'd have to weigh the risks. (This can happen now, of course, but it would become much more common with your suggestion.)

One problem might be people making tons of escorts to suddenly inflate their score.