copying from the bugs section a much better written post regarding this issue---
So firstly, this is not a complaint about ships in general, more about a specific shard. The following https://www.reddit.com/r/SWGalaxyOfHeroes/comments/5f26t7/abnormally_competitive_ship_arena_shard/ was posted a short while after ships was launched and the basic theme of the post was:
Ship shards were determined by start date, player level and arena power (similar to the calculation that drives GW nodes)
The above worked for most player start dates given it would only have a slight bias towards creating slightly more active or less active shards
However, for players who started in July-September 2016, the calculation failed because it put a disproportionate amount of both active players and spenders into one shard given only players ranking high enough in their arena shards would lead them to qualify for this shard
While only CG or EA can give tangible data on shard activity, here are a few data points to give people an indication of the competitiveness of this shard:
Recently counted around 10 players with a GP above 3 million on this shard, in addition there are several more approaching this figure. The top 50 by GP would rank as a top 5 guild
Players who finish top 3 at their payouts typically have to battle up from ranks below 70 every day which often requires multiple refreshes. My worst experience was going to bed at rank five and waking up 144, others have woken-up even lower
I'm on a shard chat with north of 50 people, there are many who rank highly in their arena shards who have simply given up on this shard. Even with mass coordination, scheming and collusion, this shard has become a real source of frustration given the effort required on a daily basis to maintain rank
If everyone was in the same boat it would not be such an issue. However, because this shard took in so many active players, other shards from the same vintage are much quieter and players can seemingly hold rank only fighting a fraction of the battles. With the new crystal rewards implemented, it seems grossly unfair that certain players will be effectively inheriting several thousand more crystals a month for significantly less effort
I would greatly appreciate a response on this issue. The fair thing to do would be to redistribute players or simply place them on the same shard as per arena