I would say ships are needed, how much effort you put into them is your own choice though. They’re needed for GAC, and fleet arena obviously. Useful in both TW and TB as well, without them you’ll be at a constant disadvantage in Grand Arena and you won’t be able to help as much in TW and TB which isn’t any help to your guild, not to mention you’re automatically cutting out one source of Crystal income. They’re also needed to actually farm some characters, Shaak ti and B1 for example are in the last bunch of hard nodes on fleet so without one you won’t be able to farm some toons. So basically ships are needed but If you don’t like them that much then you can avoid them, you’ll just always be at some sort of disadvantage so if You want to be competitive in any way you’ll need them.