Recently, playing against the AI as TEC, I found out that the Kol battleship's flak burst ability is far more potent than I'd thought.  At level 1 it isn't so great, but at level 3 and fighting an enemy fleet that had 30-40 light carriers...it was obscene how many fighters the Kol could destroy with this ability if I waited to use it when a large number of strikecraft were in range.

Destroying strikecraft gives your capitals a smidgen of experience.  Using this ability a few times through this battle, I got a level 2 cap up to level 5 pretty quick just because of the ridiculous number of strikecraft I was destroying.