I don't think it would really work the way you want it to. As soon as your ships are further apart, enemy ships will get in between them. If the enemy is stronger, he will drive one of your ships back, effectively ending the "cooperation".
I think the main idea is make AI at least form a "line" when they are able to, not just random roam and chase to make themselves separated and killed.
They seem to be very wary of where "enemy line" is but not very good at keeping themselves in ally's line.
Most of the time the battles do not balanced numbers of hulls, and players are mostly doing few vs many (for more profit by reducing cost).
In the few vs many case, the enemy naturally form lines by sheer deployment number, and when ally ai is trying to "pick" a target, they roam through the edge of enemy dominated space randomly and most resulted in more separated pattern.
This just seem ODD tactically.
In theory, when you're on the outnumbered side, the best strategy is to hug and focus fire on certain target, try chew down the enemies randomly went too far from their main fleet. From the number advantage side, it'll be easier and faster to take down enemy by separating the full fleet into 2 to 3 squads and surround the target for full annihilation.
The A.I. now is obviously NOT executing any of the above. They choose target randomly and stick to it until they randomly switch to another, making few vs many much harder due to it ends up many "1 vs many" when AI is not given any effective order. The escort currently is making them sticking too close and greatly limited their firepower due to possible friendly fires.