I have just thought of a great way to give new life to the “Ellydium” ship line without changing anything!
The Ellydium faction overall rank should only ever be as high as the highest rank ship you have. This rank should change when you modify your ships. For instance if you have a R5 Tai’Kin, and a R14 Thar’Ga, your Ellydium rank is 14. If you modify your Thar’Ga down to R7, your Ellydium rank changes to 7. This would allow players who own an Ellydium ship to control what rank they play in to gain resources and complete missions, instead of being stuck at R15 or whatever their actual maximum rank is.
This would give players more reason to grind for one or more of their ships, and also let players play the game much more freely than before. It would be a win-win scenario for the devs and players! ^^
With this, players could equip their Thar’Ga or Tai’Kin with the rank they want to play, (R8 for me because Nightingale,) and still be able to do missions that require you to use “maximum rank” ships in combat slots.