Sins of a Solar Empire may be closer to what you're looking for. It's definitely got the many ships part covered, and aside from being a gigantic game of rock-paper-scissors, it is fairly tactical. There is planet management, but upgrades are very limited, structures are moderately limited, and you'll hardly notice either.
There is a research tree as well, but while it does have a decent effect on the game and is necessary to unlock things, it's not half as focused on it as GC2.
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If you're asking about a mod for GC2, you can certainly create a new tech tree (or set thereof), making such ships more difficult to field. As for planets, you can just set up 1-per-planet buildings so all your planets have the same thing...but this should be designed around the minimum planet class you'll find (5 becomes 8 in DA, can become as much as 14 with 11 free tiles in TA).
While that doesn't address your issues with research itself, what you could do is simply gut the entire tree, have everyone start with all components, forget about improvements, and as all the planets will be low industry, it'll be more effective to spam fighters than build battleships.
There's also a scenario, Battle of the Gods if memory serves, that has all races start with all techs. This may or may not be enough for what you're looking for, though.