I realize I'm casting a wide net with the title of this post, but I'm going to be focusing on things that specifically effect end game meta.
1) Fleet Size Limit(FSL):
The way it works presently, the player is forced to spam capitals which is expensive, slow, and gets old very quickly. I usually quit the game and start a new one once fleets are scaled up to this point bc it just isn't very fun. I know many people have already asked for an increase in FSL, and while I haven't scoured every post on the topic, I'm assuming there are reasons why that can't be implemented. My suggestion is instead to make frigates count as 1 ship, destroyers as 2, cruisers as 3, and capitals as 4 or maybe even 5. I think this would diversify fleets a great deal. If the cap could be bumped up to 40 or 50 that would help as well.
2) Talents:
Talents are another factor forcing players into capital spam. Many of the talents revolving around smaller ships are really cool in theory, but are not viable in the late game so I'm going to go through some specifics and what I think should be different about them.
-Wolfpack: It works quite well until the late game when all the CR bonuses in the game won't be enough to make the limit of 10 officers hold out long enough in smaller ships to take on 10
capitals. I think a. players need access to more officers (which I believe is something that is in the current dev build) and b. this talent needs a scaling modifier to make it viable at all stages. For
example, it could scale off of the player's level or the same mechanic that scales enemy fleets. This talent would also be buffed by the FSL change above.
-Coordinated Maneuvers: It's difficult to notice the effect of nav rating and ecm rating so tbh I'm not sure how well this one works. In theory it seems good but the same issues with FSL and
officer limit apply here.
-Tactical Drills/ Flux Regulation: The DP cost limit does not really work, even fleets of smaller ships will end up over this limit and the bonus feels negligible. Instead of dp cost limit, it should just
give a larger bonus to smaller hulls. To keep it from being broken in the early game, it could also have a scaling mechanic based on player level or the enemy fleet scaling bonus.
-Best of the best: I'd like to see a ship size element to this talent. For example: capitals are unaffected, cruisers can build 1 extra s mod, destroyers 2, and frigates 3.