Why not? You spent all that effort rendering the models for these ships, why is there no option to allow players to upgrade a ship through the tiers? I could easily see alot of people wanting to fly lower tier models as their end game ship.

A couple other suggestions.

A nice boost to longevity for players at the level cap would be a system which allowed the player to earn skill points and or additional BO slots for their ships over time. Yes, ships that have been at cap for a long time will be more powerful then a fresh T5 but you can make the advancement slow enough that people wont be able to have a dozen bridge officers. Have it earned off pve/pvp daily's.

Mix in synergies that passively boost skills with ground combat and space combat. This will make your canned races more appealing if skills in the ground combat are augmenting spaces skills and vise versa.

Make warp flight in sector space about 50% faster then it is right now. I know space is a very big place and your attempting to convey that feeling. But when I leave Earth for a quest and its 10mins of sector flying time to get to my planet its a little over the top-it reminds me of the run from east freeport to qeynos in the old old EQ days.

And last, but not least, more non violent options for resolving both space and ground episodes. In space, When a monstrous Federation ship answer a distress call about pirates, wouldnt atleast some of those pirates surrender or attempt to run. I understand some species, like Klingon, will fight to the death, but many others would not. Scaring off or disabling ships and capturing their crews alive is much more the Starfleet way of doing things.

I'm enjoying my free ship every ten levels for sure, but to be honest, I still miss that tier 1 cruiser...just felt the most trek to me

I'm all for some kind of "refit" option. I don't think we should have the ability to, say, pimp out a constitution class with as many consoles as a star cruiser, but keeping up with our BOff advancement would sure be nice. I can even understand the argument of not increasing the number of slots, but merely the rank. That would make me a happy camper too.

I wouldn't mind seeing a few of them make comebacks as "Advanced" versions, with a bit more hull, better weapon and crew loadout, etc, and a higher Tier.

These made great reward items in SWG: JtL.

An Advanced Akira, with some specific visual uniqueness, no customization, and a T4 or T5 level of capability placing it more in line with a half-cruiser, half-escort.

And Defiant Advanced Tactical, with T5 loadout and superior handling + a (non-combat) cloak.

Etc.

Similar things for Red side, of course!

Honestly, the best way to do this would be to introduce some Mirror Universe mid through endgame mission rewards of captured ISS models that are more combat oriented. Add some Federation science mod versions of non science, too. Not sure where/why there would be cruiser-like variants.

I think we should be able to "pimp" a lesser tier ship to be equal with a T5. The main reason, more variety for the playerbase-so that everyone is flying more then just one of three ship types. If its not equal people will just settle for T5.

I'm all for this. I am now in the ship I have been looking forward to since OB, the Defiant class.
I would like to keep this ship through Admiral and still have it be effective.

To be honest this sounds like a good option to put in. Use the current 'crafting' system to be able to do this at T5. Hell allow us to make 'minor' upgrades to these ships each tier of crafting just so we have a reason to keep these ships AND use the poorly implemented crafting system.