ComJak wrote:
1. Player squads would only really make sense if there was some benefit to being close together. For instance a health boost or accuracy boost (just examples). Otherwise, there is not logical reason for players to clump together.
Health and accuracy boosts doesn't really sound good imo, but yea, just examples.

There are lots of benefits to staying together though. Ofcourse, "clumping" together is a bad idea, spacing is important. That doesn't mean, they shouldn't stay in touch with eachother though.
Another human can watch your back way better than the AI can. Currently the best you can do in that department is setting their waypoint in the opposite direction of what you are covering and hope for the best.
ComJak wrote:
And if you think AI are hard to control in squads, wait till your squaddies have minds of their own!
The obvious solution being TeamSpeak or something similar. Typing in combat is just begging to be killed.
Also it doesn't hurt to be a bit organized, without going total milsperg about it ofcourse.

Having a designated squadleader is really useful, and cuts down on the "uuuh, where should we go now? i dunno, uuuh?"-situations.
Also having a clear and consistent view of what role you have in your squad helps. If you are on the back of the line, you watch the back and your mates can count on that, and so on.
They key to winning in tactics is situational awareness. And the key to situational awareness is communication. Four people see a lot more than one.
/mad_rant
I forgot where i was going with this. But I think I had a point in there somewhere.
I don't really know if player squads are really neccesary. But perhaps some better visual indicators on other players.
I think even just the ability to choose your marker color (and perhaps have them persistent) would help a lot on identifying who's who.