I don't think that zarax want a system that may let you just put two ships here and there in fred and have a realistic battle anyway.
But I think that this little CapshipAI upgrade may come useful in many situations nonetheless, since it could be an useful addition to your mission script to cover those situations that you haven't designed or that it was impossible to design or that you didn't want to design (multiplayer missions?ships that may or may not be in a mission depending by persistent variables? battles with uncertain outcome?)
not being a fredder, ships not just staying there firing at what comes in range doesn't sound that bad to me..I've seen stupid capships in any space sim I've played so far, just staying there waiting for you to return to base or to destroy them, or moving apparently uselessy independently by the mission's objectives, or just walking to death due to low flexibility on their behaviour.....waypoints and scripts just don't cover always everything