I pay really close attention to my fleet experiance on a game I'm currently running. Why? Because after a while the little novice tag changes to Elite
No, seriously, experience makes any direct fire weapon improve hit chances. But you don't need to destroy a ship with direct fire weapons to get experiance. All you got to do is to get fired at by direct fire weapons so you're shields take some damage. I mainly use large amounts of Seeking Parasites and I've got two ships that both of them fighted themself up to Elite status (22%).