So yeah, I noticed something.
The AI classes (i.e. "Coward", "Lieutenant", "Captain", "Major", "Colonel", "General") vary with difficulty.
On low difficulty, the Shivans are pushovers , because their AI sucks, and you have various other statistical advantages over them. On high difficulty, they can be pretty nasty.
Well, friendly ships use the same AI classes as enemy ships, and on an easy difficulty level, this means in addition to pathetic enemies, you've also got incompetent wingmen.
Thus, I have a proposed solution for modders, which is already supported by existing features:
Create separate AI classes for enemies and friends. The friendly AI classes should probably be approximately constant between difficulty levels, and the enemy AI classes should get "smarter" as the difficulty level goes up. This way, you won't suffer from 'stupid ai syndrome' on easy mode, and you won't have your wingmen doing all of the work on hard mode.
Comments?