Most likely Brad Wardell, aka Frogboy, aka Draginol, aka CEO and owner of Stardock, creator of the GalCiv-series and Lead Designer of GalCiv II.

You're already spot on for the most likely reason. Not that it matters much anymore, that Cargo hulls have only 1 HP. Twilight of the Arnor, the second expansion, added Fortitude modules, which increase base HP. Just put some of them on a Cargo hull, and you gain a pretty powerful warship. Better than Medium hulls in fact, because you can gain levels, and therefore HP, at a faster rate. Space monster were originally intended to be part of the game (same as GalCiv 1), but were finally left out for some reason. I don't think the devs put that much thought into it. Anomalies are just goodie huts in space. Nothing more. Armour does work against beam weapons. Just at a lower rating. Here is explanation of how the combat systems works. Lazy designers? Hardly. More like time and money constraint designers. The game originally only had 5 ship styles. TotA added ship styles for all 12 major races. Some of them are based on existing ones, yes. But I find that reasonable, considering all the other improvements the expansion provided. Yes, the espionage system as it is now isn't good, and the way the mechanic to train new agent works is completely non-sensical. However, it is a massive improvement compared to how it was in the base game and the first expansion. The current version is basically a combination of those two versions.

As for the chance to steal techs automatically once you reach the highest rating, it doesn't work properly anymore. It still happens from time to time, but only extremely rarely. I'm not entirely sure when it broke, but it was before the CU. However, the CU certainly made it worse, because it changed a lot of techs so you can no longer steal them. Stil, your best bet to steal techs is to assign agents to enemy planets, the more the better. Which is quite expensive to do, and still doesn't guarantee success. It was done this way to prevent the genocide runs from MoO and other space 4X games. Here is a post where Frogboy explained this. I'm pretty sure, that he explained this in more detail at some point, but I can't find the post right now.

Actually I *did* once blag a tech - and if I recall right I did have an agent on an opponent's research facility.
I assume you have to put a spy on a research facility to get a chance of stealing techs, or will any old spy anywhere on an enemy planet do it?

I'm wondering if minor races don't bother nullifying your agents neither. They rarely last longer than 3 or 4 turns when placed on normal races planets, but on minor ones they seem to stay forever..... but I'm also wondering if you cannot steal techs from minor races neither, just like you cannot usurp them with influence!
Shame really, I'd like to see the minor races have a bit more ability and less of these arbitary immunities, though maybe that would make them "not so minor" races!

A bit more on the subject of anomaly rewards, what does the "gain your crew valuable experience, making it more lethal when you next upgrade it" one do? I can't see any benefits from this one.

In a current game just a few minutes ago I spotted a minor race mining base that was stated as "having foreign influence of "1.#?" times their own races influence"..... that's not me hiding a four letter word, it really said "1.#?"!
Reminds me, sometimes on stat screens you see massive numbers like 4764573778% as well.

All minor bugs that don't really spoil the game, but bugs nonetheless...... could you give your developer pals a bit of nudge?!

A logic reason: A cargo hull isn't structured for combat, it is structured for storage space. One good hit and the whole thing falls apart. A fighter is going to be structured such that it can actually take at least a little bit of damage; its size prevents too much reinforcement. Laser I is the necessary tech to use the idea. Lasers 2-5 are just improvements on the basic idea to make the weapon more efficient. While a single step up isn't a big deal, several steps up and some miniaturization can let you pack an extra weapon or two on the ship. Armor is focused on protecting against ballistics (mass drivers), not energy (beams) or explosives (missiles).

Even in our world, you use very different setups when you're trying to protect against bullets, flame, or explosives. Explosive defenses are oriented toward destroying the payload before it reaches the target, flame retardants are focused on dissipating the energy, while mass driver defenses are focused on absorbing the focused impact. Very different sets of physics involved in dealing with each one.

If it helps, in the game armor DOES provide some defense against missiles and beams, just not as much as it provides against mass drives. Shields and Point Defense likewise provide some defense against all 3 types of weapons, but they are most effective against the weapon they are designed to defend against. That big honking battleship is equipped with lots of people that are trained for running a big honking spaceship. All those crewmen are NOT trained on how to conduct a ground invasion.

Also, that big honking battleship simply isn't equipped to operate as a ground invasion logistics center. That's what the troop module is for: to house planetary aggressors and the supplies they need to conquer.

Any building will do. Minor races can and do train agents, so I'm not sure why they don't use them. It could be another restriction in their AI.

You can steal techs from minor races. I usually gain do so via invasion, because I can't be bothered to waste my agents on minors. This anomaly gives 3 XP to the survey ship, and any other ship in the same fleet. The wording makes it sound better than it really is. Probably a leftover from when leveling up did more than just give the ship more HP. That's a result of the way the game handles minor races' culture-immunity. I wouldn't call them my "pals", considering I don't know them personally. I only interacted with some of them a few times on the Stardock-forums.

As for another update, it's very unlikely. The devs have moved on to other projects, like GalCiv 3, Ashes of the Singularity, Star Control: Origins, and the like. We're lucky they agreed to the Community Update, and most of the work for that was done by us modders.