In the next update they will be implimenting frigate and cruiser lvl ups
Veterancy for smaller ships most likely won't be in 1.1, unfortunately. There's a crash issue associated with them somewhere that I haven't been able to sort out, partially because it only happens several hours into the game. Hopefully I'll be able to solve it.
1. Spread Fire seems to make Capital Ships 3 times stronger - as far as I can tell ships which have it will deal full damage to three targets at once, with the weapon animations literally splitting into three identical streams.
Yeah, when we were doing 1.0 we didn't know exactly how it portioned out the damage with that. We've been making adjustments accordingly.
2. Capital ships seem too strong compared to their supply cost. The largest capital ships (besides the Praetor, which is in a class of its own) cost about 16 supply, while most top-end cruisers cost 8. Since mid-end game fleets are limited more by supply than resources, there ends up being no reason to use anything except for capital ships. The boost from attaining higher levels, capital ship abilities and generally superior durability make them more powerful than the equivalent cost in frigates or cruisers.
They're meant to be, partially as a way to make the AI actually able to build them. Once that bit is solved more effectively, we'll be able to raise the supply costs more (or before then, since we're
more concerned with multiplayer). Capital ships are more meant to be gated by the capital ship crews (which are being significantly reduced) as opposed to regular supply.
3. Titans are not that durable - as one per fleet flagship units I would like to see them stronger (in terms of durability, not firepower) and perhaps more expensive.
With titans we've always erred on the side of making them less powerful and scaling them up as we go (especially with abilities being added). If they're underpowered, that just makes them less useful If we start with them overpowered and everything else is fine, you get the same problem base Sins where titans are pretty much all that matter.