I find this idea interesting, because usually when you had suggestions of similar ship types beside the boss unit - and a straight jump to vastly underperforming cap ship in comparison, when I looked back t mods for soase 1 there were usually classes of sub-titan very big cap ships.
But a tier between cruiser and cap ship ('hero') I havent seen yet.
Years ago I suggested that all ships gain exp from doing their thing. So it is not only just the heroes who privatize all the experience and glory, while most of the gain gets zero-summed to poor cannon fodder which never gets the praise for their oftentimes, huge sacrifices.
So that it is worth not carelessly throwing your cannon fodder, where only capship heroes matter. On top of that, Titans do stack up too with levels.
But the poor frontline fighter, who oftentimes does most of the work gets nothing.
Like say, cobalts, imagine they can level up to lv 3. Their level could work different than the cap ship experience, which is solely for kills, but it came to me that CoH 2 veterancy system could be used. Meaning, based on damage done and received, units got experience there for getting beat, but not annihilated, because losing whole squad or a vehicle meant that the exp ended..
Old game like Red Alert 2 damage (in their system, it was kills yielded exp) your unit required to do 3x the amount of damage of its own amount, to gain experience level number 1, and additional 6 x equivalent of its own cost, to get experience level maximum, total 9x the amount of own cost in damage.
CoH 2 had a system that was about you getting 1/4 or so of your own cost, getting damaged, as experience. I think so at least. If youre doing 1/10 of damage, then that unit veterancy isnt right around the corner.
Something,like when you have the pirate wager or what the name is of the item, it gives you amount of gold to you based on the amount of damage youre doing.
Just doing the shooting and destroying something is not the same, as the shooting going both ways.
Higher-vet units are considered as more expensive, thus damaging them also would/should give more exp as well.
Veterancy for basic units could be symbolic, say 5% better acceleration, turning, 5 % hp, damage, plus some visual differentiation, maybe a stripe somewhere that oyur units are the Elite 
increased rank yields better resistance to conversion and what not.
I played terminator Defiance 'RTT' (tactics being the means and ways of executing strategic plans)
In that game, your infantry uses the imo outdated kill-exp system, And units do vet up. And you can select after a mission (because you keep the same units) and give them various perks. They run faster, or get more armored/become slower (HP increse, 20% 10% speed decrease, another one 10% hp increase on top of the level, again, with a further 5% speed drop), or they shoot even faster than regularly with level increase. Lowering their upkeep too. Accuracy increases with level. Regardless of unit type, same vet all units have the same accuracy based on weapon. There you have 6 levels of vet total, say militia when vetted up gets to have an MG in their squad, which they didnt previously. This squad is primarily a tank/cannon fodder in the end at lv 5 they get the most HP per infantry unit. and can have bouble armor (30%hp - 15% spd) plus more ammo or run speed increases.
It may be similar to how you get Garda Mk II. But the additional turret is added at no added cost.
So, I mean, the levels if they are added, can have an additive bonus, if there are 10 levels for basic ships, well, even a 2% increase to hp, damage etc would be big enough.Of course, each level would get more expensive, even if the level added is the same amount, which in turn overall per level increase is decreasing (from 100 to 102% and from 118 to 120% the 2% dont increase as much in proportion, because 118% to 120% increase is just additive to the base instead of proportional 2%. Still, you have unit upgrades that would still result in a bigger stats-wise increases.
Yes, combat effectiveness of a unit that has 1,2 hp, 1,2 dps is going to be higher, because that stacks,, going from 1x1 to 1,2x1,2 versus base unit. A 1% increase in speed per such a level would be also enough.
If you wanted to add some other than visual upgrade, you could have some thing unlockable/buyable at say lv 5, but I mean that this is how it could work for basic ships that currently cant gain any exp. Yes, I do mean turrets, fortresses (they cost a lot so that would take really long)
Using this sort of system you could also get the sense of how much your units are effective..
This way could also be replaced the current experience system with experience gains that are based off some numbers same as in SoaSE:R.
It will give results that hitting and doing damage to expensive ships, would bring them more exp, as long as they are able to do damage. But doing like 1/5 of damage or less, exp gain will be smaller.
I know that this game wasnt built around this leveling system, it could be a complementary one for non-capital command ships but I think its not strong enough to brake balance anyway, especially, because cap ships stack up with levels so much more.
Small ships not stacking one bit makes them a bit redundant. If they dont share the exp eating with cap ships, you dont really penalize anybody except small ships, because cap ships get their exp without doing damage.
If there is such a system that levels up your small ships too, on a level system their own, independent from cap ships, you get rewards for putting them to action and not losing them all. And if your ships gets some different decal for surviving the whole time, a bit of combat power, perhaps ability to upgrade them / rebuild into something more special once at max, lv, or something.
Otherwise, once you get stacking flet of lv 10 ships, youre incentivized to add more caps. Being also very vulnerable to things like unit conversion is also something vet system could help with.
...
what u guys think ?
A 'heavy-heavy' (super?) cruiser acting as a mini-cap ship, then you have propers caps, then you have 1 - 2 classes of ships before the big titans, which are rather extreme in the size/power department. Battlecruisers in their time were fast but weakly armored. SC uses the name but battlespaceliner or battle spaceship 
would be more appropriate, or as they were Fast Battleships if you want the latest equivalents.
Did SoasSE devs think about that before ? Maybe not. Oh well, regular heavy cruisers despite refits have proven inadequate to fully cope with the new situation and the 3 factions started each fielding their own semi-cap ships. Or resource savings to get as much firepower fitting into smallest hulls available, I also came up with the idea of very annoying long range fighter that would use long range missiles good at taking on strike crafts. but Im going too wide in the topic.
Oh but the number of ship types will be too many, all factions will be just respoins of the other.
Thing is too much diverse build roster may result in a faction being unale to answer some units combinations etc.
At the same time, what need to fill in the army do these new ships fulfill ? I dont talk a role. Role is rock paper scissors and unit mashing approach to tactics. Your faction has these things. Or the mini-cap ship is what you get at the start instead of the big ones. Because the big ones are more expensive and less efficient in some ways. There should be incentive to fielding more ships and only when you filled out the numbers sufficiently, should you be getting the incentive, ok, I got these, but I need to up the power of my fleet even if it is cost inefficient, because me adding more small ships will not give me the firepower needed to face a certain level of barrier. Like you have the torpedo cruiser or the rest with 1k pen. But those are usually based in semi-squishy hulls or are simply more expensive, like with the Vulrak. What kind of this less than capship, more than a cruiser, which are actually needed. And why do you actually need it, is the lower tier unit not good enough in some sense ?
Because I like the idea of progression over a game. You have heroes, - cap ships or boss units in the form of titans.
It depends, when new unit do get added, they will create new incentives for new units probably as well, which could balloon into more and more being needed. In a sense this would make perfect sense because rarely something does not get obsolete, when your new product gets countered. You need to upgrade your defense or offense to stay competitive. Then with hardware, you have physical limitation both on armor and on weapons. Where do you store the ammo, how long is the ship expected to be in a combat zone until it runs out of batteries, munitions, fuel, everything. And many other factors.
So I guess with new unit additions there will be incentives to make certain units go obsolete, where you get the better one more supply efficient, even if not cost-efficient. I mean this is very much the difference between gold and trash units in games like AoE 2. One uses a less common resource and gets more supply efficiency. But when / if you are able to amass the trash spam unit, you will have the upper hand due to the Lanchester/Osipov differential equation that counts numbers and unit combat effectiveness in order to predict the outcomes.
Currently Im not playing SoaSE 2, just came by to write a bit here and there some very long texts 
