You can get around this by buying the rank up fruits from the dog coin vendor located at the desolate church. Costs about 700ish dog coins to rank a pal up from zero to max doing it that way and you can farm the coins fairly easy once you have access to the fishing magnets.
They get mutagen at lv1 pls a rank of sneak attack. The mutagen gives you a +2ac natural armor bonus and a plus 4 physical ability bump at the cost of a -2 to wis int or cha of your choice. So a lot of bang for your buck of a 1 lv dip.
Homeworld 2 is an amazing game and if you haven't played it yet and like RTS games it's worth giving it a go as it has held up surprisingly well given how old it is.