Where does the Ship XP go?

[_Whitey_]

So I found a tier 5 ship that was fun and have been playing the bejesus out of it, I now have sufficient ship xp to jump 3 tiers with a small truckload of xp left over in my tier 5 ship. When I make that 3 tier jump to a tier 8 ship what happens to the leftover ship xp that is on my tier 5 ship? Keep in mind that I will have researched but not purchased the tier 6 and tier 7 ships in that class. I surely don't want to have it locked in my tier 5 forever! 

I suspect that it will eventually turn into elite status xp if I convert it using doubloons even though I skipped purchasing a few tiers? 

 

 

[TabbyHopkins]

So I found a tier 5 ship that was fun and have been playing the bejesus out of it, I now have sufficient ship xp to jump 3 tiers with a small truckload of xp left over in my tier 5 ship. When I make that 3 tier jump to a tier 8 ship what happens to the leftover ship xp that is on my tier 5 ship? Keep in mind that I will have researched but not purchased the tier 6 and tier 7 ships in that class. I surely don't want to have it locked in my tier 5 forever! 

I suspect that it will eventually turn into elite status xp if I convert it using doubloons even though I skipped purchasing a few tiers? 

 

 

 

So, you have enough exp on your T5 to skill all of T6 and T7, and get to T8? Well, unless you have lots of gold, with that T5, you will only be able to unlock the stock T6 ship. After that, you need gold to get that EXP to "free" (ahhem, premium exp) exp, and then you can use it to blitz past the T6 and T7.

[Tank3rDude]

Yeah you can only use xp attained on a ship for the next ship in the line. Once you unlock everything for a ship it becomes "elite" and you can convert the xp gained into "free XP" with gold doubloons.