Right now the game suffers from a problem of ships lacking visual variety. Personally I think more unique models are needed, even if it means getting creative and making stuff that never existed.
Right now most factions (the semi-major ones like austria-hungary, russia, japan and italy) (in the same time era) have no visual diferences between same spec ships besides the flag. The turrets are the same, the hulls are the same etc. I understand why you recycled the british quad turret for almost all other factions, the others never made one (if they did, to find them you need more tha