My recommendation for this is similar to a suggestion I had a long time ago when the Partner program was still in existence.

BECAUSE there are tiers and there's, unfortunately three stages for this, Tier 1 ships shouldn't even be played against other players. Forget that recruit is an option. Tier 1 is your tutorial for learning how to play the game. The immediate tutorial is good and all, but then you have to go into Proving Grounds for a bit, which is also fine, but you just have to play a set number of matches. What Tier 1 should be is, research and purchase upgrades while learning and upgrading to Tier 2 ships and even researching those, upgrading, etc.

Recruit should be Tier 3, Veteran Tier 4, Legendary Tier 5.

Why that specifically? Because you don't play enough matches in Proving Grounds to be able to get a solid grasp on how the game really works before jumping into online matches vs other players. At least now, with Recruit being Tier III, you have a foundation.

MM is tight because the playerbase is small. Solving the symptoms isn't solving any sickness. You can't even split the T5s into a new category because the playerbase is to small.

The whole progression system takes you ages and drains people.

Competent developers and artists once again were forced to push out a money grab game but it failed misserably. Dreadnought had and has potential but somehow incompetency got in the way.

I told them here on the forum exactly what would happen in 2017, without steam it would have even died earlier. Nobody listened. The move that a skin is on a "per ship" basis drove a huge playerbase out.

The only thing dreadnought can do now is make a FF14 move, slap a 2.0 sticker on it and hope a different approach might bring in way more cash. But for that you need A) money and hard work.

What really saddens me is the fact that the core gameplay loop is amazing and expandable and could bring in plenty of customers.

BGV Kokurou has a good point about progression but on the other hand, whats the point in having 5 tiers of ships when you only have 3 tiers to play in.

Here's the worst seal clubbing I have ever seen in Dreadnought.

In Onslaught, a kill earns 10 points to your team.

couldnt even get into a legendary match. ill give them effort though with the free stuff during the weekend

I am also tied of teamplayers who are worth nothing if playing one vs one. I am sure devs can make teamplaying as a separate case and teams will play only vs teams. if you want to play solo - you should play vs solo players. it is so simple fix.