Upgrading heroes ships

In the game i felt like there is nothing i can really do to make heroes ships shine...sure,we have perks for weapons to do more damage,but hero ship never get bigger than in the start of a game. They just 1 cp small vessels,painted in strangely disgusting red color,that flies near their big neighbours. The heroship in the end of game need to be "great", to be impactful like in all great space operas. In game however - it never felt unique,never felt like it's important. That's why i propose to:

1. Get the upgrades system for a ship. Mechanism to expand avaliable slots on ship,because it would really make solo heroes and hero-ship only perks viable.

2. Get the visuals for upgraded part of the ships. Nuff said,we need to easily distinquish improved ship from his "ordinary" counterpart.

Additional features:

3. Add new resource-ship artifacts,that you will gather for completing quests,banishing pirate lairs,surveing map after it was revealed (mechanics close to pearls from endless legend) and helping minors. From a lore wise this can be viewed as retrieved artifacts of "concrete". For example each new slot for a ship would cost twice as more ship artifact more,like 

1st slot - 1 Ship artifact

2nd slot - 2 Ship artifacts

3rd slot - 4 Ship artifacts etc...

4. Make heroes duel to each other when they are in space battle(if each of them are guardian at least,but this can be discussed)

5. Rivalry system. When one hero faces another for three times in a row it then its called "battle for honor" and first who will win would get happiness boost to the empire. Even more,the system can be scalable,so that if where is 10 fights the stakes for happiness penalty would be higher and higher.

Would like to see your vision on that question pals. In my vision i was inspired by "darkstar one" space sim.