Yes, strategic repair makes no sense. It's a small flat amount that doesn't scale with either ship class or health. But you CAN repair ships much faster at a shipyard or starbase. It's still awful at high tech levels, but still much faster.

How do I repair faster at shipyard/starbase? There doesn't seem to be a selection for it and just parking them there seems to make no difference.

Looking in the XML files, I can't see anything that looks like a x7 multiplier on strategic repair rate for being docked at a starbase or shipyard. Base repair rate appears to be 4 HP/turn, with shipyards and colonies increasing that by 3 HP/turn for stationed ships and starbases increasing that by 5 HP/turn for stationed ships.

@Goresh:

You might want to try this mod, which increases the rate at which ships are repaired. I assume it still works for the current version of the game, though I haven't checked to make certain of that; if it doesn't, it should be easy enough to mod the current game files to do the same thing.