What makes a Capital ship Capital?

I am concerned with a number of changes that will
weaken the effectiveness of Capital ships.  Right
now Capital ships have two major advantages on a
cost basis:

1)  It is cheaper to buy defenses for a 100 mass
Dreadnought than it is for 10 10 mass ships.
2)  Capital ships have access to certain weapons
smaller classes don't.	AA guns, Nova Guns, Fighter
Groups...

I have a problem with changing the costs of shields
to a percentage of mass basis.	If you make all
weapons and defenses available to all classes FT
will simply become a contest between huge numbers
of Escorts.

Capital ships should dominate whatever battle they
are in, but a good fleet with have heavy cruisers
for pursuit, and escorts for scouting and destractions.
The limitation on Capital ships classicly is that
they are too big and too slow for certain jobs, like
convoy escorts and anti-pirate patrol.

I don't like wonder weenie fleets of scores of low
mass Escorts, and I'd prefer to limit them by
emphasizing Ships of the Wall.

There are a couple of ways of keeping Capital ships
in the driver seat.  Some people have proposed giving
Superior and Enhanced Sensors the extra benefit of
being able to give a +1 or +2 to hit for beam weapons.
Versus level 3 shields these bonuses effectively
double or triple the amount of damage a ship can do
with beam weapons.

Other people have proposed advanced Fire Control
Systems.  These constant mass systems give larger
mass ships an advantage because a special system
will apply to a larger number of weapons.

There is so much for smaller ships to do, why not let
the heavy ships dominate the head-to-head clash of
fleet?	Give them bonuses in combat, but require a
fleet to have lots of smaller ships for the more mundane
fleet tasks.

Michael Sandy