Vs Titans yes. Flip side, engage the Titan with a Titan/Cap fleet of your own and send the frigates behind the lines to create misery for the your enemy works well.

 ...  Ugh..  It's where you go...  behind enemy lines...  As in, you let your titan slug it out at the attacked planet and send your frigates to their other worlds to create havoc.

Sins of a Titan are becoming great. Not sure what the hell youd use corvettes for, even weaker than frigates

hmmmmmmm...  no.

Frigates:

#1  detonate antimatter.  If you are fighting bomber spam, use detonate antimatter on the enemy carriers

#2  flak frigates.  Owns corvettes and helps stop bomber spam.

#3  corvettes.  Great early game unit to spam.  useful in small numbers late game as electronic warfare frigates

#4  lrfs.  LRF's have been marginalized in Rebellion but in large numbers are still quite effective.  Illuminators are better off than before.

#5  repair.  Robotics cruisers are as necessary as always.

#6  nukes.  needed in small numbers to speed up planet bombing tremendously.

Cruisers:

#1  better off than frigates because of higher health but still susceptible to aoe attacks.

#2  Heavy cruisers.  You dont need as many now as in diplomacy, what with aoe attacks making you less dependent on cruisers for dps.  Still needed in limited numbers as a capital counter.  (Although i hear KoK can pull off a killer Kodiak rush)

#3  carriers.  self explanatory.

#4 guardians.  Most beneficial unit by far.  helps protect entire advent fleet.  Ultra useful and always needed.

#5  support cruisers.  Vasari support is the best with subverters and opressors, though all support units are needed in at least limited numbers in any late game fleet.

So no.  Frigates and cruisers are not a liability.

That is a slight exaggeration.

A Titan without a frigate fleet can very easily have its AM depleted and is then extremely vulnerable.

Edit: The Maw rarely comes into play because the VL Titan struggles to get the required exp. It is also easily interrupted so frigates are free to do their job. Dunov, Akkan, Radiance and Kortul are all key anti-ability ships that bring frigates back in the game.

Exactly.

Succinctly put.

To my knowledge the Maw and Nano Leach only work on Frigates and NOT cruisers

This matches up nicely with modern fleet tactics, where battles are all about the carrier. You will have missile cruisers to screen aircraft away from the carrier, submarines to keep shipping at a distance, helicopters and destroyers to hunt enemy submarines, and the various aircraft to perform their missions.

It's all about the "big ship". Small ships are supposed to do small ship jobs. Generally this isn't in the middle of a pitched fleet battle unless they offer some kind of support role. 

Smaller ships are used for harassment, economic interdiction, breakthrough (as mentioned earlier), picket duty, merchant ship protection, etc.

So the "Sins of a Titan" approach really is a reflection of modern fleet deployment.

Whether it makes for a better game - well that is a good question. If small ships dominate the game even after capital ships are built - then why have capital ships? What is their role if not to dominate battle? The same holds true for the Titans. These empires were driven to build the massive ships, at great expense. Doing so wouldn't make sense if if these ships weren't so effective as to be mandatory.

Or in english, The Maw will eat your Kodiaks for breakfast...

Generally speaking, only disciples can use their abilities against carriers...that being said, I guess technically cobalts and skirmishers could affect AL aerias that have the "mine capture" ability, but that's a very rare situation...

Abilities and buffs in this game utilize a "target filter"...this "target filter" determines what entity types can be targetted by the ability and/or are affected by a buff...you specify in the target filter what classes of objects can be targetted....

"Frigates" is one class of objects, and includes any entity that is specified as a "Frigate"...anything that can be built at a frigate factory is a frigate, anything, including corvettes and cruisers...some other things are also technically considered frigates (missile platforms deployed by the Sova, siege platforms deployed by the Vulkoras, construction frigates)...there is no class of objects called "cruisers"...as far as the game is concerned there is absolutely no fundamental difference between a cobalt and a kodiak, they are both frigates with just different stats...

The UI can only have 9 frigates under a single "button"...since there are more than 9 frigates for each faction, the devs gave frigate factories 2 buttons, allowing a max of 18 units that can be constructed via the frigate factory...you can specify in a faction's player entity file which ships appear under what button, but for simplicity the devs decided to group all the larger frigates together and call them cruisers...

CRUISERS AND FRIGATES ARE TREATED THE SAME BY EVERYTHING IN THE GAME...the only difference is what UI button you click to build them...

If you don't believe me, use the dev.exe and spawn whatever ships you want and try to use abilities on them...nano leach, just like any other ability that affects frigates, will affect kodiaks and cobalts alike...

There is one unusual thing in Rebellion in regards to the target filter...if a target filter includes "frigates", that ability/buff will then also affect corvettes (which are technically frigates)...however, the target filter can also include only "corvettes", which are distinguished from other "frigates" by their specified role type in their entity file...

Any ability that affects frigates also affects corvettes...abilties set to affect only corvettes will not affect other frigates....

How come when I use Maw it doesnt eat HC's and Carriers?

glitching?