Capital ships don't live long enough to suffer from decay.

The Battlestar is a ship built from a long dead empire. There is no high end infrastructure left to support and maintain it. A SoaSE capital ship is funded and fueled by the mightiest space empires around.

If anything, a Veteran ship is going to be filled with personalized mods, the design is going to be worked over a hundred times with the kinks all worked out(those fixes may find themselves in future ships), and there possibly could be top secret prototypes eager for front line use. If it's the shining beacon of the empire, it's certainly not going to be shown up by a run of the mill ship.

Considering Galactica was obsolete when the show began and considering what it has been through, it should be in no way compared to the capital ships in SINS.  The ships in SINS are brand new and even use nano-technology for repair.  The nano-technology lets them get repaired perfectly as the nanites are small enough to anywhere and fix anything.  Plus once programed nanites work on their own without supervision, freeing the crew to only have to worry about providing them power and raw materials to work with.

Galactica is just an amazing ship. i love that show and watch it EVERY friday. but i agree with bob that in the sins empire situation the more leveled up the capital ships get the more they would be maintained. the problem with galactica was all the crap she got put through. I MEAN CMON JUMPING INTO THE ATMOSPHERE OF A PLANET!!!!! while no ships were meant to take that i bet that pegasus (a MUCH newer ship for those who dont watch the show) would be in much better condition and wouldnt have those problems

You know why, there sitting in a salty ocean 365 days of the year,

a cap in space is not experience rust, different kind pressure, and it is deffinately going last eons in space, think about our rovers on mars, there in very good condition, same with the satalites orbiting earth.

the only reason why it would fall apart because it is to outdated to use,

plus all the modifaction done to a cap will help it last longer and stay together

Slight tangent here:       (but fun to think about)

Advent would use psychic powers to fix things. They already use them to strengthen their armour and extract minerals efficiently etc. (see their research tree)

TEC look like the kind of group that build things modularly. You know: "The port engine is starting to degrade, better pull it out and slot in a new one", kind of thing. I can see them just taking out whole hull sections and replacing them. (fits their big industrial style too) 

Course Cap ships should age! Its a fact of life - and should be reflected in SINS, especially on the larger maps.

In fact, military techs should only take effect on the next ship built, opposed to upgrading the entire fleet. Perhaps older ships could return to shipyards for non-structual refits and upgrades? This would put more pressure on fleet rotation - and importance of each (usually expendable) frigate.

Apollo999

Where is it implied that TEC design their ships to be modular? And for a great big capital ship, I doubt they have spare 100-megatonne engines and the like lined up or floating around just to switch out. And that still doesn't repair the cap's superstructure.

An idear hit me when dchan1936 mentioned refits. Why not have it so that when a ship lvl's up a "new" item is added onto the ships, like a new wing secion, a battle bridge or shield generators attached to the hulls. As the lvl progresses the ship gets stronger, but there is no physical change to show that appart from the lvl marker that tells you what lvl your ship is.