Imagine ships autoshifting into formation position at 10% tidi. People wouldn't even USE a psuedoautopilot like that in combat (which a formation would force) - they won't even use it flying from system to system in Empire.
Also a ticke at he back of my brain hat even if they could make it smooth it would ezmode things and pilots in fleets would simply learn less skills. Like aligning to safeson their own etc, as they'd align with the gang leader automatically, in synchronicity. Etc. But I'm also tired.
The ships may LOOK like shit with no formation but formations, 2D ones, are as pointless as space-walls, and 3D ones would end up, once ships align to fireon taregts etc.. a bit like that. Its not hard to get a gang to fly and move in formation tbh. People don't bother for reasons of their own distance to targets/personal align points, etc.
Just for the actual individuality going on in EVE for each pilot even in 1000man fleetblobs .. after all, each ship can tend to be their own, their own ISK, their own responsibility, and again, formations to make sense would be placing control of your ships distance etc from gangleader... ehhhh... Pain for beauty is one thing but fleets welping cause a FC/wing commander/w/e does a fucktard fleet alignment move on everyone under their command at a shit time...
Id have that feature turned off myself. If my ship blows up I want it to be because of the speed/traversal/alignment *I* put it at, not at some FC who may have zero fucks to give about what the loss would do to me. All titans /whatevers aligned to the same safe = slower escape chances, no good if they all warp to the *same safes* or safes in a drag bubble line along the warptunnel. And not all fleets move their gangs to the same safes for that reason. Align time is precious seconds.
The preceeding is a fully uninformed opinion.