"I was assuming no orders, capt's using their heads"
Yes and no, in some cases the captains put into the closest friendly port by necessity, but mostly followed orders when possible. Even those weren't cast in concrete, they might leave Pearl with orders to refuel at Midway then patrol the Marshalls, after that head for Brisbane - then get a radio message on the second day out of Midway to patrol the Carolines instead. Then a lifeguard mission cuts short the patrol, further radio message cancelling Brisbane, go to Freemantle instead.
I read several books covering the whole Pacific submarine war, about half the patrols finished in the same port they started from, the other half they would sail from one place and end the patrol somewhere else. It wasn't a random whim by the admirals, in many cases it had to do with available facilities - example 1010 dock at Pearl gets 8 subs that are so badly damaged or with stuff broken (HOR engines for example) they need a lot more turnaround time than originally anticipated, so a few subs originally scheduled to return to Pearl are sent to Australia instead to prevent Pearl from getting jammed up with even more subs waiting for repairs. And vice-versa, repair docks in Australia would get jammed up depending on where the current action was so some subs would be diverted to Midway or Pearl for turnaround.
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