Some thoughts.
Now we have a situation, when:
1. There are so many different and effective types of battle ships, that any game AI would be miserable necessarily.
2. Missile Defence fire control is so smart, that Formation orders (one of the most beautiful game instruments!) are useless.
3. Jump points topology makes practically impossible for AI to operate on players communications.
Consequently, war in Aurora tends to become plain and one-dimensional (war-of-one-point-straightforward-task-force) at tactical level and boring at operational level.
So, some attempts to fix these problems and at the same time to make game more realistic and "intuitive measuring":
Ia. Strengthen main weapon (i.e. missile) damage effects and simplify their design. Missiles with such closing-in speed needs no warhead - they are their own WHs per se, and they must be crippling or killing for any ship, if they pass through active defence. This change will kill two birds. First, it will strengthen the role of active missile defence, making it mandatory for any main battle ship. Second, it will simplify missile design tasks for game AI, making it less miserable.
Ib. Strengthen fuel consumption of small and forced engines, and make engines forcing fully available at start to prevent miserable role of missile fuel tanks and, most importantly, to make light missiles suitable at close range only. It will prevent from not so effective, but very tiresome missile spam and, again, will make defence tasks more simple for AI.
Ic. No fire control must have 100% hit chance at once. It will approach to 100%, but never reach this point. And no fire control must have an ability to repeat fire only at intact targets at the same cycle of fire. The goal of this change is to make active defense to be disposed in depth mandatory. If our fire control at any reasonable conditions have a noticeable chance of miss, and, at the same time, any missile have a noticeable chance of oneshot kill, then you must have early warning and multilayer active defence. So, beautiful multilayer formations will live!
II. Strengthen stealth techs, but make it time-limited (fuel-burning, as shields, maybe, or simply limited with some tech-dependent timer). Maybe, in addition, make JP to have its own radius, to let these stealth ships to pass at nonzero distance at inbound (where it will be defence stations, ships or mines). It will make possible for well armed ships to pass through JP invisibly and to sneak at battle formations from any direction, attacking at close distance. No more absolutely safe and quiet rear star systems, defended with JP piquets-and-minefields. Less safe zone with one big radar. Again, war takes more tactical and operational depth with it. Even more need of deep formations, and most important - need for deep force deployment. Player must not only defend his main battle ships from sneak attacks, but also must defend his communications - must use patrols, convoys, trap ships.
Summary, these measures will force to use one or two main types of battle designs ("open" missile and stealth sneaking beam or kinetic), but gives no 100% warranty of success for each of them. Both these design types will be available for AI, and they don't need mandatory for any complicated timing of combined attacks, that will always be a weak point of AI - no, "sneak" groups can attack independently from "open" battle force and independently from each other too. So wining battles and campaigns against AI will be not a simple task and players will take their adrenaline systematically. At the same time, we will keep all splendid variety of Aurora weapon types, though their roles will be more specific.
