What do you want a descriptor that says built in escape pods. The devs design the mechanics so you cant say its goes against game mechanics. Secondly if a titan was reset to lvl one then the other persons titan could just repeatedly steamroll you into oblivion.
You kill the enemy titan and it takes time to be rebuild so you push forward while its rebuilding and kill it again when it shows up. Is that really so hard.
Also its not the same with capitol ships since for one if the enemy didnt lose any capitol ships and you lost every thing then your finished regardless. You lose a few cap ship lvls then they should have too and its still even. specialy because a lvl 10 capitol ship has no where near the influence of loosing a lvl 10 titan back to lvl 1 would.
Lastly I on a personal i like the ability to get a lvl 10 titan in a game cause if it reset every time it died well chances are that will only ever get to 10 in a bot game or the game will last for like 3 days of game time.
it's quite easy to explain.
a military operation learns from what is done, the lvl gain on the ships giving them more abilities, more hp firepower etc. would NEVER come from any experience that the crew members got, but from the experience the military operation got = they would know how to use the ships ALREADY mounted mechanics (you would never set a unknown idiot into a cap ship, and knowing which weaponry the ship have is the minimum to read in the manual).
the issue with the steamrolling you already got when you lose high lvl cap ships, since they are also insanely strong at higher lvl compared to lower, not to mention the support they add.
i really do feel liket it is a fine idea to have a lvl that sticks, i think it is needed for all the cap ships as well, i would like to see some kinda system that allows you to switch out types of cap ship and keep the lvl (lets say i got a lvl 7 battleship, and i build a carrier, the carrier should be lvl 7 as well to keep up with the lvl of the combat it is gonna enter directly into).
i think that the only way to archieve something like this is to let it be a upgrade in the same manner as the combat research skills (let there be a researching which gives lvl 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10. and makes it stick, obviously let the requirement for these be in a balanced amount of research so that you can't just instant rush lvl only, this could be done by letting them be excluded untill x research have been done within that "tree".)
i do love the idea of ships lvling in combat, the problem is just that it gets too dependent on the individual ships (which can be focused and instantly killed in big battle's) and losing these is way too harsh.
it gives the feeling of WC3 instead of Wc2 (where heroes are suddenly the main focus of the battle and once you killed the enemy hero you won+-).
the titans especially with their insanely high aoe dmg seems to make smaller ships even less effective and more useless then they already are :/
homeworld had a pretty good stick on it "every ship was needed since they countered higher tier ships and lower tiers" so getting 3 types wasnt enough to fight effectively. i would love a bit more of that 
more effective small ships countering specific bigger ship types etc. so that you had to have small ships as well as big once ^^
anyway for the lvling i really think that there is a need for some kinda static lvl, maybe alongside the lvling making you at least get a decend lvl ship instead of lvl 1 if you where unlucky and lost a ship.
(titans are so hard to lose that they are actually of minor concern since you won't be able to focus kill them fast in a fight, and they can just warp out if you tried and you will have lost most of your army on it while the other guy just evacuete and repair.)
