Need option to tell wingmen to get the F--k away from me!

[Salvagebot 1.0]

"Are there concrete AI improvements that might help?"
AVOID THE FRONT OF MY SHIP!

Wingmen are worse than useless if their "formation" keeps putting them in front of your guns. They should pointedly avoid the business end of the giant fusion cannon your ship is most likely packing by the time you get wingmen.

Dwarg are the worst offenders. It's like they're TRYING to get in front of my guns. They make it really difficult to clear away looted wrecks. Even hunting dogs are routinely trained to get out of the way of the hunter's gun barrel, but the Dwarg apparently flunked obedience school.

I'll also second the standoff tactic others have requested. "Skirmish" would be what I would name the long-ranged attack option.

Third, "Defend Mission-Critical" would make wingmen attack enemies which were attacking mission-critical friendlies. If you don't have a mission this command would tell them to defend your Mule Autons! I'd give anything to have wingmen defend those!

Fourth, any damaged ships should automatically dock for repairs. Always. If there is no repair in-system they should gate out. If they're slated for deletion upon mission completion they're removed from play; if they're permanent wingmen they should reappear 5-10 minutes later fully repaired. There's no excuse for your wingmen to charge into combat with 1 foot in the grave.

Finally, and here's one nobody has come up with yet, AI wingmen in their standard attack mode should try to keep enemy ships closer to the player ship then they are. If the closest enemy ship is at distance 5, wingmen should assume an "exclusion zone" of radius 6 around my ship and fly so as to avoid it. This will have the effect of "boxing" enemies instead of putting my wingmen between my turreted guns and the enemies they're targeting.

Incidentally I find the "Break and Attack" command pretty useful as it is. You did a good job with that one. Perhaps the default behavior should be "Break and Attack" with a maximum-range-from-player addendum so they don't fly halfway across the map to hit some pirate cache guard.

[Cardinal]

With the CSC missions involving wingmen, I typically just use a jumpdrive to get to the destination, and then slaughter the enemies before the wingmen arrive. Then just jump right back. Mission successful, congrats on not having your wingmen snap-dessicated in a vacuum.