I agree that it would be nice to have ship shards on the final tier - especially the harder to get cargo ships that aren't in the lower tiers. 1-2 shards of Hound's Tooth is worth 15 of Slave 1 or the Phoenix ships. It would be worth maybe 3 - 5 of Lando's MF except you still have to farm Lando from the same node, so since you're gonna be farming the node for Lando whether you get the MF shards or not, it's back up to 10-15 of Lando's MF. Having 1-2 HT shards, then would be a fine replacement for the lost 5 shards of lesser cargo ships.
But, as much as I'd appreciate that, I actually don't see the highest tier as a step down. I'm consistently doing the highest tier and find it to my advantage to get the extra prestige and ship omegas. Maybe you don't. Maybe you prefer the shards. That's fine. Follow your strategy & see how it works for you.
In the meantime, I'd just like to point out that the bit about how historically the top tier has always been best? Yeah, that's not true. A LONG time ago the higher tiers of daily challenge didn't include all the gear from the lower tiers of the daily challenge. The idea was that you'd get to a point where you didn't need them anymore. For most gear pieces that was true, but not all, and people complained here because of it. They ended up changing the Daily Challenges rewards to incorporate all lower-tier gear at each higher tier.
So while I think that the last tier is still a step up, I'm not entirely sure why shards aren't included (even if only for SS currency) and if y'all want to complain, I say go for it. It's no skin of my back and who knows? You might even get EA/CG to give me more rewards on my next Cargo mission.
