Went right out the window with the latest patch.
Premium ships now don’t have appeal because of the new synergy system, and because you still have to pay anyway to gain synergy off of using one, there is just straight up no point. I was considering maybe a premium ship, but now I’m certainly not. This new synergy system is just not well implemented, I can see where the intention was good, I can see what the goal was, but it just doesn’t work, it’s just flawed.
Another thing to note, as I’ve always wondered, when buying a premium ship, you should logically just be able to buy one in your current tier without buying all the ones before it. And if you can’t, then…why? You want to encourage people to actually want to buy them, not discourage buying them.
Either a) Revert to the old system (which is unreasonable I know)
b) or implement some of the great ideas being suggested in the forums (excess synergy on premium ships is automatically converted to free synergy, etc.)
The new system is just a shot to the foot for profits on premium ships, plain and simple.
I for one would be interested in one, if it actually had advantages (not major balance advantages in combat obviously). When you buy something in a F2P you want it to be worth it, not cost you more to take advantage of it.