I have played nearly 100 hours of this game. Still the best ship I have ATM is only Tier VI. I mean why do you even bother having a ranked game mode if it's only accessible to people who are either great at the game from the start, making progressions through the tier easy, or have no other commitments in life. This wouldn't be such a douche move if there was some reasonable price to pay to earn XP faster, but as it seems my only real option is to buy ships which generally cost 50-60$. That's to much just to play proper competitive matches.
Then to top things off you have this built in greifing mechanic where the player that got the most XP in a loosing battle is motivated to save himself and [edited]the game for everyone else. Sure there are games where this is fine, but I have seen enough of the videos posted by Mighty Jingles to know that it's not uncommon for a player to do this even if there is just 2-3 ships left on the enemy team.