[lutusp]

> However, some of these were misleading. I had one running for 15 minutes at 5x, and the third body did eventually return.

That's not misleading. Real three-body orbital systems show this same behavior. Consider that such a system must obey energy conservation, so only a few extreme edge cases lose one of its members permanently (not impossible, just unlikely).

Ironically, because computer simulators are based on numerical DE solvers, they sometimes show outcomes that a real orbital system wouldn't/couldn't.

[moi2388]

I don’t understand. How would energy not be conserved if one flew away? It’s not in the system, but it’s still out there?

[lutusp]

I'm just saying that, because of energy conservation, an escaping member would need to permanently carry away more than 1/3 of the system energy (for equal-mass satellites). This is possible but unlikely.