There is technology to increase fleet size. 

And it is a pseudo balance issue. Having a larger fleet means you have more ships in one combat.. which means you have more firepower than the opponent. 

Also in the battle planner you can see that, they will later implement reinforcements to battles, then fleet size will matter even more. 

i think there will be more possibilities: attacking with more fleets and more tactical gameplay than in ES1. But they are still in the begining of the developement.

you can have multiple flotillas in a combat. i am not sure the max, but i've seen 2, and it looks visually like the max would be 3 per side.

the 'broadside' guns can probably fire on 2 flotillas.

fleet size limits the buffs you can put out from a hero or support module;  if your fleet was one blob, buffs could rapidly get out of control and dominate combat totally.

as is, i think the command size increase techs are probably too powerful; if command size is intended to limit the impact of blobbing, it's not going to do it very well if i can have 27 command points + 3 heros in a single combat at era2.

TheDeadlyShoe wrote:

the 'broadside' guns can probably fire on 2 flotillas.

These is indeed true once you have 3 flotillas against 1. It might make for deeper tactical considerations when the combat becomes more developed, but it seems odd that I currently get punished with higher repair costs when I outnumber an opponent