From today's devlog:
I had hoped to use the Commendations to allow dedicated players to obtain ships outside the usual economic channels. What’s become clear is that it isn’t dedicated players doing this – it’s everyone. What’s more, the gameplay experience when you get a ship that way is either uninteresting because the ship is too cheap, or it’s aggravating because of all the commendation grinding you have to do to afford it. Even if we manage to hit the sweet spot between those extremes, we’re still seeing the market for any ship given out via commendation crash into a below-cost pile. That means that the ‘free’ ships are the preferred ships, because they’re always cheaper than the ‘non-free’ alternatives. In hindsight, this is a pretty obvious and inevitable outcome. I’m therefore removing all the free ships from the commendation exchanges. The writs aren’t changing, but the endless piles of Bermuda sloops are going away.
Now if they will just do something about the no-sink upgrades...
Bog