Recently, I noticed that the station guards at Bractus M14 had been missing. It has been this way for 2 days. The most likely cause for this is that someone has deepspaced them and is keeping the sector alive while deepspaced, preventing the guards from getting back to the station. Since guards don't change during station conquering, they stay deepspaced even when the station changes hands.

Suggestion is to make station guards self-destruct and instantly respawn from the station when the station is conquered. Even if you deespace the guards, the moment station is conquered the guards chasing you self-destruct and new ones undock from the station at full health.This would prevent any such incidents.

Why not just leash them? It's a little more believable than kamikaze station guards.

PinkFlyer2: Seems we're leaving the perimeter of the station. We should turn back.
PinkFlyer1: Negative, PinkFlyer2. Maintain pursuit of the target.
PinkFlyer2: But, sir, the station will be left undefended.
PinkFlyer1: The station be damned! There's a target still on radar! Maintain pursuit!

The main issue with leashing is being able to abuse the limitations on the instruction set.

Self-destruct can be justified from an RP perspective too. The guards' employers have changed, their contract is over and they go back home. New guards employed by the new owner come in to replace them. This would also mesh with any future plans to implement customisability of defenses in conq stations.

This was added in 1.8.654, this past week. They don't self-destruct, but they do "jump to nowhere" and then respawn.