It's intentional and can be useful. You might have noticed ships are split into attackers, hunters (battleships), protectors, coordinators (cruisers), and carriers. Attackers and Hunters will always target Protectors and Coordinators first, while Carriers (the dreadnoughts) will target other carriers first, then attackers and hunters next.

Cruisers/coordinators have a lot more support and defense slots compared to other ship types, and using these as dedicated tanks or vehicles for fleet support modules is ideal. This module can ensure that it's the tankier cruiser that gets shot at, while also preventing carriers/dreadnoughts (who are massively armed) from killing too much of your fleet's firepower because of their priority to target battleships and destroyers.

Then again, I haven't seen any of this in use yet (no need to against the AI). Having a screen of cruisers/coordinators is usually enough; I haven't had a battle involving 20CP enemy fleets with carriers yet.

Thanks for the information! I would not have guessed that. 

That seems odd. I think a more intuitive way to handle this would be to have the ability to increase evasion with an opposing counter capability to increase tracking. Battle build outs always seem more interesting when you have many choices that involve what to counter.