Being able to operate separate task forces was a luxury made possible by American numerical superiority. And ships operated in separate groups/squadrons because before computers, an admiral commanded a battle from the bridge - if you depend on being able to look out and see what's going on in order to give orders, there's a limit to how many ships you can command effectively. If you want a real world example of how splitting your force can backfire spectacularly, look at what happened to the Japanese at the battle of Leyte gulf.
Another thing, that no one mentioned yet, is that wars in Aurora are highly linear. It seems like there's usually only one jump point in or out of enemy territory; once you know the jump point route to the enemy, the most effective defense is to concentrate everything you have on that jump point. If you want to make things like separate task groups and diversionary attacks viable, the number of interconnections between systems needs to be boosted again so the Galaxy map is less linear.
Everyone did this in WW2, not just the Americans. Also, the Japanese did not loose the battle of Layette Gulf because they had many battle groups (as did the Americans too), they simply were outmatched to begin with.
They were never going to win, but they didn't do themselves any favors by sending all their carriers off to die alone as a diversion, and splitting their battleships and basically throwing two of them away.
Fleets operate like this today as well and computers have very little to do with it, real world political and military goals and needs does. The real world are way more complex than any game can even hope to simulate. You could try a game like Command modern Air/Naval combat to understand how modern fleets actually operate and why they deploy in task-forces.
I've played it. I also have real-world military experience.
I do agree in some sense that jump points can make wars quite linear as there are only one possible approach. But that might certainly not be true if you play with a multi-faction Earth start though. You can also have potential enemies in more than one front and you never know when and if these enemies work together or not.
In any way... no one would ever be in their right mind in the real world to pool all their ships in a fleet in one giant fleet and head out to sea, there are many reason for why this is a bad idea.
Except that this was standard practice from ancient times, through the age of sail, into the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. Ships of the line, all the way into the dreadnought era, would operate in the largest formations possible whenever possible, with frigates and eventually cruisers delegated for colonial defense, commerce raiding and protection, screening the battleline, and scouting duties.
The only good reasons to divide your forces are: you're fighting on multiple fronts; something (like a supply depot or jump point) absolutely must be defended; some of your ships are too slow or obsolete to operate with the main force; some of your ships are unready due to training/maintenance/fuel/ordnance levels.
If the game can make more realistic strategies viable with changes to some of the mechanics this is a good thing and carriers certainly will play an important roll in this. Or basically any ship with a hangar... you don't need dedicated carriers to use fighters and FAC effectively.
The game doesn't represent reality, but a hypothetical simulation of superscience space warfare. An effective strategy within the game is by default "realistic" in the sense that, if somehow the laws of physics changed to match trans-Newtonian physics as depicted in Aurora, the same strategies would emerge, because people do what works. You're not asking for more "realistic" tactics, but more "interesting" tactics.
