Another Pilotless Ship (are you kidding me?)

Whenever they add a piloted ship, you don't have to gear its pilot - You get to gear its pilot.

Without crew, there is no variation in the ships. Everyone has it at 7*, level 85 with max abilities. How do I make my ship better than yours? I can't, because there is nothing else to advance that everyone hasn't advanced already. It is way too easy to max out these ships, if there is no "expensive" pilot connected to it.

Sure, it may seem like a waste of resources to Zeta or Relic a pilot just because you want a better ship - but at least you have the option to do so, and if the opponents don't - you are and should be allowed to have an advantage. That seems fair to me.

Pilot-less ships remove this aspect of the game. It makes for less variety, and makes the game just a little dumber.

But, I can actually imagine it working to not have pilots for generic ships, with the understanding that it takes too much effort from the developers to create the actual uninteresting nameless character that pilots it... but then those ships need a way to invest zetas, relics or something comparably expensive directly into the ship so that they can become better. If that were the case, I wouldn't have such a problem with these pilot-less ships. I imagine it could be a mod system for ships, or simply an expensive max level increase that everyone can't afford for all ships. Something, anything.

Such a system could even be added on top of piloted ships, so that they too can become even better, and for global consistency, making the actual pilot less important than those ship-specific upgrades, if desirable.