You are able to capture ships in both
SFB and
FC; I don't recall if
Starmada lets you do so as well. I'm not overly sure why there are no capture rules in
ACtA:SF, though I hope the matter might be revisited at some future point.
One thing to bear in mind with the Age of Sail examples is that all of those (European and Euro-colonial) ships were built using fairly common construction techniques, with at least broadly interchangeable materials, weapons and (human) crews. Yes, there were the odd distinct ship types (such as the
original six heavy frigates of the early US Navy) but even they would not have been overly challenging for a would-be captor navy to run.
It's a bit different once you start getting into rival spaceships built with alien technologies, exotic materials, and other logistical challenges. (Well, not quite as much with this early wave of fleets, but things get far more exotic the further in you go; and even now, of the seven starter empires, at least one, the Tholians, have web technology that no-one else in the SFU can operate or reverse-engineer.)