This just isn't true? you can get ALL of the information relevant to the capabilities of a ship without any elint?
You can get speed, sensors, weapon ranges, ECCM, ECM shields, armour etc.
Once a ship has shot at you then you should be able to classify it with almost a 100% accuracy?
This is true. You can obtain all of this information --
in combat.From a roleplay perspective, if nothing else (I would argue this is also a good game mechanic), it makes sense to determine partial information about alien ship classes before we shoot at them (or they at us), because from a roleplay perspective any military planner worth their rank will want to have an accurate assessment of enemy capabilities before going to war with them. Of course, we cannot get complete information on the enemy force, nor should we be able to, but getting some basic information before engaging in combat is not unreasonable nor unrealistic. We can already get some information without even using ELINT: size, speed, and any revealed active sensor or shield signatures. Personally, I would think knowing the hull classification of alien ship classes which the alien race itself uses is another useful piece of information, which by no means gives away the full extent of alien capabilities but can potentially give you a bit more information for planning purposes. As a simple example, if your military planners know that the alien race uses missiles (DDGs, CGs, etc.) then part of the war planning includes assessment of point defense capabilities.
So basically what you are asking for is the game to spoon feed you information you couldn't be bothered to look up / determine yourself OR you want more information on enemy ships without any extra effort, which just makes the game even easier to counter AI designs, which the game sorely does NOT need.
I hardly think one piece of information - namely, the hull classification - constitutes being spoon-fed. Nor for that matter would I consider the necessity to deploy and maintain ELINT assets to acquire this information "without any extra effort", I would in fact consider this to require extra effort.
As it currently stands, you can in fact get this information
without extra effort. The "Real Ship / Class Names" checkbox at the top of the Intelligence window will reveal the hull designation of any newly-encountered alien ship classes (but not previously-encountered classes) - so already, we can get this information for zero effort. I can't speak for everyone else, but all I propose here is to (1) not reveal the hull designation when using the real ship/class names, and (2) to make the hull designation discoverable with ELINT (which requires
more effort than currently), separately from discovering complete class design blueprints which is a very rare event. This also means that the amount of intelligence you obtain remains the same regardless of whether you use the real ship/class names or your own designations, which I think is a minor point but all the same one that should be consistent between those two options.
Honestly, I'm more interested in the first part - I would like to use the real ship and class names (it makes AAR reporting easier in multiple-player-race campaigns) without seeing the hull designations. If we never get the capability to reveal the designations with ELINT I don't care so much, relatively speaking.