Regarding the Counter-Attack GPs: Just popped another one, and it sent the wave against my homeworld again, only this time it's 8 hops from the nearest warp gate. I own most of the galaxy at this point, so there's plenty of good targets within even 5 jumps.
I'll post a save tomorrow if desired (no good saves, so I'd have to reproduce the behavior), but this just makes me think that I'm misunderstanding something --- "It's not a bug, it's a FEATURE!"
edit: Game Autosaved shortly after, so here's at least the post-pop save and log.