Would it be possible to have a yes/no flag in ai profiles or something, that would reverse effect of difficulty slider on friendly AI? As going through half of all ships and turrets in every mission is serious pain in the ass if you create five new AI classes (or more depending of mod) for that purpose.
In other words when this flag is enabled, on very easy friendly AI would be like hostile AI on insane of same AI class. This prevents friendly AI becoming completely useless in lower difficulties and actually becoming useful. Whereas on insane friendly AI would be retards and player gets exactly what he ordered in terms of difficulty.