Downsides of using small ships:
- Fleet limit
- AI ***, so, they will die time to time. And some people (like me...) dont want to bother refilling the fleet
- Without missiles, all, they can do: strip opponent's flux to let bigger brothers do their job
- You dont have enough officers for each ship
- You can expect little ships to work as great scouts, but it doesnt work well enough. In battle they have greater speed, yeah. But you need to order them to scout. Outside the battle it is way worse: smaller ships have way smaller sensor range and almost the same speed (like 20 burn vs capital fleet, having 18)
- Some hull mods have lesser values. Yes, they also have lesser cost, but it is proportional (+/-) to ship's lesser number of OPs. Yes, it looks right, because small ship has way less deployment cost, than a capital, so, you can imagine the situation where your 8 wolves destroy one Onslaught. But in reality such situations never occur.
Upsides:
- Low cost
- Low maintenance cost
- Pretty good speed, so you can easily pursue those pesky frigates, when enemy's cruisers and capitals are killed and Benny Hill starts
Just for me, Upsides < Downsides. And about new skill system's influence on frigates: looks too artificial. You can boost light ships more and more, and some day i ll ask myself: "Hey, why use destroyers, if i can use frigates instead for lower cost?"
I wanna mention some games with the same "weight" problem:
Stellaris. You can build corvette fleet, and it will do well, if enemy has no splash damage. So, no problem here. It is all about proportions (of effectiveness and cost).
Homeworld. Cant remember the costs, but there were simple system: Capitals > Cruisers > Destroyers > Interceptors > Bombers > Capitals and cruisers. Think about that.
World of tanks. Because of armor system it was pretty hard for light tanks to deal damage to big armored targets. But light tanks have their own role: great sensors (in terms of Starsector) and great movement capabilities.
Mechwarrior online. Game looks pretty similar to starsector: mech has its own tonnage, which limits its abilities to mount weapons and armor (and heat capacitors, yeah) and also works as deployment cost. The session is a battle 12 vs 12. But the difference: no energy shield (so, no regenerating HP) and armor works just like additional HP, but when it is depleted, the mech can lose some components installed into damaged location. The system is good, because even the smallest mech can deal damage to the biggest one. Can remember one game when matchmaker malfunctioned and we got a battle with mainly heavy one side vs mainly light enemies. And heavies got outplayed. Was awesome.
Ofc, Starsector must not be the same as any of those games. Shield and armor mechanics here are its own features, and i, personally, wanna see them to stay as they are, without any changes. All i wanna say: small units need their own role. They must be the best for it, so it will be an attractive choice to use em.