The "Threat" is the direction that will be used as "North" with regards to the "Offset Bearing" variable. "No Offset" means that the ship will position itself directly between the protected task group and whatever the threat is.
"Task Group" is what you are protecting, and "Distance" is how far the protecting fleet will be from that task group.

To get something to always face the enemy, you want to set the "threat" to the general direction of the enemies. It may work to just set the "threat" to the protected task group's heading, but that doesn't help if what you're escorting is an escort of something else and thus has no actual move orders. I personally never use task group heading as the threat because I might tell the "lead" ship to move away from the enemy, causing my entire formation to wheel around and face the other way instead of just "reversing" and continuing to perform its escort role.

O.o One has to wonder how much time do you have to spend setting up the infrastructure to properly support this beast...
Why the hell it has sorium extractors, rec facilities and cryo berths ??
And whats up with those slow, small warhead torpedos ?

The torpedoes are MIRV designs so you can't see their true payload. One has a single fast WH 25 missile and the other has I think 10x WH4 size-1 missiles.
The main idea for the design was to be as independent from my colonies as possible, and to be able to take on small to medium sized fleets on its own.
The rec facilities and sorium miners handle the independence thing, and cyro is for picking up lifepods.

Why so many fire controls? (...) I'm not asking to criticize just to understand, I heard that in the case of say point defense it was important to have multiple fire controls so they can engages multiple salvos

As a general rule of thumb, the more fire controls the better. This gives you redundancy in case of battle damage, and more targeting flexibility. In the case of missiles, it also breaks up your broadside into a number of independent salvos, each of which require a separate fire control for the enemy to be able to engage them all.

Why the survey scanners and EM sensor (pretty sure EM passives are built into actives). .   

So as I mentioned re: Lossmar, it's part of the whole independence/do everything package. Since I envisage this guy just lurking around the fringes of known space, it is likely to be on-scene at any potential encounters with hostile races. This would allow me to immediately begin to hunt for the jump point to their home system instead of waiting for the survey fleet to arrive.
EM sensors are actually distinct from active sensors. While it is true that you require EM tech in actives, active sensors can not actually detect EM emissions from enemy ships. I think the technobabble explanation is the active grav component sends out pulses periodically, and the EM component detects the waves which bounce off any objects and come back towards you. Since the EM sensor has to be precisely calibrated to detect these grav waves, it cannot be used to detect the normal spectrum of EM radiation anymore.

Speaking of, what is your point defense supposed to be?

I had a bit of a different take on defense here. If I actually feel threatened, then I can use my size-1 missiles defensively to thin the incoming salvos a little. Otherwise, my main point defense comes from CIWS (which I renamed as a "shield system"). If there are no other targets in beam weapon range, I could also use my railguns as extra point blank defense. For the most part though, I would mainly rely on my (fairly beefy) shielding to absorb any incoming fire seeing how it can regenerate a bit over 30 damage points every 5second increment. From what I've seen, there's not a lot around that can reliably get through this level of shielding.

Also, interesting that you made missiles stand in as standard cannons.

Heh, kudos to my buddy @Vandermeer for the inspiration for this one. Do check out some of his writeups in the fiction subforum, he's got some pretty good stuff out there.
Also, sorry for the late reply, didn't actually notice your post until just now.

A battle line may be inefficient, but it looks swanky.

How do you array your fleets into as exact a position as that?

And could you take us through the makeup of these various groups? You don't have to post all your ship designs, just give a general sense. For instance, do all your groups have comand ships or are those unnecessary as long as their is one in a group close by?

I know some will (very vocally in some cases) disagree with my choices, but my "battle-line" of choice is pretty much:

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Vindicator class Cruiser    1 000 000 tons     12977 Crew     104975.5999 BP      TCS 20000  TH 75000  EM 60000
3750 km/s    JR 2-25(C)     Armour 12-890     Shields 2000-300     Sensors 180/320/2/2     Damage Control Rating 300     PPV 1250
Maint Life 0.07 Years     MSP 18122    AFR 40000%    IFR 555.6%    1YR 250896    5YR 3763442    Max Repair 4457 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Flight Crew Berths 675   
Flag Bridge    Hangar Deck Capacity 50000 tons     Troop Capacity: 2 Battalions    Magazine 30000    Cryogenic Berths 10000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 50   
Recreational Facilities
Fuel Harvester: 5 modules producing 250000 litres per annum

Trinity Hyperspace Core C-1.035m     Max Ship Size 1035000 tons    Distance 25k km     Squadron Size 2
Hydrani P-Fusion Commercial Sublight Drive (150)    Power 500    Fuel Use 2.65%    Signature 500    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 52 520 000 Litres    Range 356.7 billion km   (1101 days at full power)
Xantheon Reactive Armour (400)   Total Fuel Cost  6 000 Litres per hour  (144 000 per day)

Hydrani-Pattern Shield System (50x10)    Range 1000 km     TS: 32000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
200mm Flechette Cannon (50x4)    Range 320 000km     TS: 8000 km/s     Power 36-6     RM 6    ROF 30        12 12 12 12 12 12 10 9 8 7
Clayton Long-Range Fire Control (10)    Max Range: 320 000 km   TS: 5000 km/s     97 94 91 88 84 81 78 75 72 69
Tokamak Fusion Core (5)     Total Power Output 320    Armour 0    Exp 5%

150mm Auto-Cannon Mk.II (200)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 5
Standard Torpedo Bay (100)    Missile Size 10    Rate of Fire 250
Cannon Control Centre Mk.III (20)     Range 17.8m km    Resolution 15
King-Lowe Torpedo Guidance Centre (10)     Range 756.0m km    Resolution 100
150mm "Striker" Shell (2000)  Speed: 28 800 km/s   End: 4.8m    Range: 8.2m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 297/178/89
150mm "Cleanser" Shell (1000)  Speed: 24 000 km/s   End: 13.3m    Range: 19.1m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 80/48/24
"Perdiot" Torpedo (500)  Speed: 9 600 km/s   End: 1315.5m    Range: 762.7m km   WH: 4    Size: 10    TH: 32/19/9
"Stalker" Torpedo (500)  Speed: 12 800 km/s   End: 1007.2m    Range: 781.1m km   WH: 1    Size: 10    TH: 42/25/12
150mm "Eraser" Shell (17000)  Speed: 48 000 km/s   End: 5.7m    Range: 16.5m km   WH: 4    Size: 1    TH: 288/172/86

Savant Inc Ship Detection Sensor (1)     GPS 24000     Range 768.0m km    Resolution 100
Savant Inc Missile Detection Sensor (1)     GPS 240     Range 76.8m km    MCR 8.4m km    Resolution 1
Talbot SR Scanner Mk.II (1)     GPS 48     Range 15.4m km    MCR 1.7m km    Resolution 1
Savant Inc Missile Detection Net (1)     GPS 480     Range 153.6m km    MCR 16.7m km    Resolution 1
Savant Inc Ship Detection Net (1)     GPS 48000     Range 1 536.0m km    Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH10-180 (1)     Sensitivity 180     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  180m km
EM Detection Sensor EM10-320 (1)     Sensitivity 320     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  320m km
Improved Gravitational Sensors (1)   2 Survey Points Per Hour
Improved Geological Sensors (1)   2 Survey Points Per Hour

ECCM-4 (10)         ECM 40

Strike Group
60x Corsair II Fighter-bomber   Speed: 19200 km/s    Size: 5
50x Lynx Fighter   Speed: 19200 km/s    Size: 10

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposesEscorts optional, just one of these fat boys and whatever fits inside the hangar bays. Should note that maintenance was off in this game.

Why so many fire controls? Why the survey scanners and EM sensor (pretty sure EM passives are built into actives). I'm not asking to criticize just to understand, I heard that in the case of say point defense it was important to have multiple fire controls so they can engages multiple salvos. Speaking of, what is your point defense supposed to be?  Also, interesting that you made missiles stand in as standard cannons.

There are valid preferences for varied approaches... but 72k, really?
I've been very happy with magneto-plasma missiles that only travel at a leisurely 16k, and I doubt I'd usually want more than 40k.

Pretty sure I had the multiplier tech, but I think the difference here is either you're looking at the really outdated ammo I tacked on just to get rid of it, or the newer missiles which traded off some engine space (and hence speed) for that WH4.

Thought they were decently fast considering my engine tech in that game was actually only around the magneto-plasma era. But yeah, unfortunately that game died so I didn't get to expand the sizes any further.