As we all know as we rank up your crew increases, this due to the crew sizes can and does make some ships redundant, for example at post captain rank you have 350 crew so the best ship to have IMO is the Indefatigable and at flag captain it jumps to 650. Which is then when you can sail a Bellona. This in my opinion makes all 4th rates except the WASA pointless. My suggestion is to introduce a way to still be within a rank but be able by some method to increase your crew at maybe specific xp points. This I think would make most ships valid again. I am speaking from the PVE server point of view. Not played on pvp for a long while.
It's just that the ship progression seems to be almost fixed, cutter, Heavy Rattlesnake or Snow, Cerberus, Surprise, indefatigable, Wasa, Bellona, then vic. Most even avoid the Cerberus and go straight to the surprise. Its just that with so many other ships available, some way to make them useful again would be nice. Any thoughts?