frigates that are spawned can consume fleet supply. They can also have a cost (this is refuned upon scuttling, unless the ability costs resources).

Also, a frigate-spawning ability can create ANY type of frigate. I can make the Vulk's siege platform ability spawn 10 Enforcer HCs if I wanted to (I don't).

True. That's the only problem. A balance thought- the REALLY powerful stuff is built by factories; the weak stuff is spawned.

As a result, you can keep making paper ships that crumple before the enemies guns rapidly (and necessitate rapid re-building), but you can't make the powerful ships.

This is just a thought, but perhaps i am misunderstanding the question: if you take all your frigates and put them on page 0, and all the cruisers on page one, then they will still be in the same "factory" but you will have a page dedicated to each type of ship.

I tried adding a second frigate factory, but since the player entity file itself doesnt separate out the entries, and wont take second listings, (i think i would get a mini-dump) that it wont properly give us a second useable frigate factory.

As mentioned above though, creating a second factory though, that "spawns" the cruisiers, is something that can be done. Look at the combat turrets and how they are spawned for reference, or look at some mods on the forum where people have done this.

My own StarFall mod does this.

It was a huge pain to learn, haha, but now that its figured out, it seems fairly straight forward, go figure, haha, anyway, good luck and let us know how it works out. If you need help, just ask.

-Teal