Quoting you for so you know im asnwering you 
Have you ever tried playing in 1x speed universe? What im about to say might seem contradictory but i think im completely right about it 
. The slower the universe is the more targets remain open which means there will be more different people attacking at the same time on different targets compared to speed universe where 1 guy can login for 2-3hours and farm entirety of nearby systems in multiple galaxies. That means that anytime you decide to login you will very likely be able to find targets you can hit since "flight time/speed of uni" doesn't allow fast clearing times for a single player. Also due to slower speed moving fleet is not really that big of a deal if you get jumpgate to lvl 2-3 (i still have it on 1 since i dont need it higher). I could say good thing about universe 1 is that top fleeters are really, really overpowered and from my experiance they can't care less about my 70 mil fleet enough to follow every step i make every single day 
. It is just too small for them to be bothered. Ofcourse they will "pay attention" on my timers and activity while cruising thru galaxy so they have general idea of when im online or not and try to attack inbetween or if i leave something sitting but thats completely normal. To be honest they like it even more to leave me alone so i get more fleet so i become juicy target for them in the future 
, those bastards! 
What im trying to say is that slower universe could bring you the gameplay you want, atleast i think you want to be able to farm your inactives, do expos and from time to time look for some players to hit? You can do that in universe 1 very easily. Yes, the attack time might bother you at first but you can get used to it, especially if you wanna play more casual without looking and refreshing your screen every 2 minutes 
Universes with 1x war fleets allow you to find a target, send an attack and then chill. While your attacking is flying you can search for other galaxies and targets so upon your fleet return you could JG and move. Im not true fleeter so whenever i find target it's by chance and luck so i just lunch the attack, put timer up or pop ogame on my 2nd screen and then chill while watching some yt videos, reading sports news or manga or w/e becuase i've got atleast 30minutes before the hit happens :D.
FYI my BC flies 1 hour 50 system away and i feel like thats okay time, i can put alarm, go to toilet, check some news and see if the target im attacking is still viable choice or not 
. Really casual play on 1x. Altough i will say system attacks are like 15-20min so thats the only thing i hate 
I understand this is very hard to determine wheter im wrong or right because the biggest factor here is number of players and not actual universe speed but i still think my opinion is right...i might be wrong about everything 
. So in the end my conclusion is that your "problems" arise from playing in too fast universe, and that buff to general class would not remove the unfairness of the game and help you achieve better results, rather it might work against you.
Oh btw im curious about your reason to join speed universe? Are there specifics reasons for it?
