I will say that putting a few officers in frigates make a big difference, even if you don't have wolfpack tactics. You can get extra PPT from the officers skills, and they are generally much less likely to die.
This is the Industry R2 skill, yes? That alone is not enough. To get enough time I feel pressured to get Wolfpack Tactics, add s-mods for Hardened Subsystems, and/or sacrifice my Radiant for three Lumens. I guess I will integrate Hardened Subsystems into my Tempests and maybe Centurions.
Without Wolfpack, frigates feel like missiles. They capture points, and I hope I can finish a fight fast enough. If I do not (which is true more often than not), they run out of PPT and bleed CR. If I need to retreat my frigates, I need to burn about two CP (because they do not all time out at the same time).
Even if frigates do their job early, retreating them when they run out of PPT/CR in nearly every late-game fight is a huge annoyance (more obligatory fleet micromanagement). I do not like having to reserve CP to move frigates off the field.
Of course, with Field Repairs, maybe I can get Wolfpack and a bunch of disposable frigates, then send them off to die. Wolfpack guarantees recovery of frigates, and Field Repairs reduces d-mods for my ships lost in battle. (However, I want Combat 5, and doing that means no Leadership for my Tech and Industry character.)
I am beginning to agree with TaLaR, the fleet needs a mix of big ships and frigates. Destroyers seem left behind, and fighters were weakened too much for late-game. I have dumped my Drover and Condor for more frigates. Kept Heron, though.
I am shying away from Leadership 4 because I do not want to lock my skills into them. (I took Automated Ships over Spec.Mods. for similar reasons.)