Tier system is a system that judges the certain ship to have certain parts or traits to do certain tasks required for that tier. Normally it is impossible to upgrade a tier unless captain has upgraded its ship through the country power for example ( research breakthrough and etc), modified under the shipyard, risky situation like forcefully install a huge cannon on the ship
Through other hidden methods and etc, it is possible to rank up the tier, After Tier 5, it may choose to change into other class
Destroyer class
Tier 0 Raft
Tier 1 Sampan and Boats
Tier 2 carvels, Carrack, Barge
Tier 3 Junks, Galleon, Frigates, Triremes, Yachts, Man of wars
Tier 4 Steamboat
Tier 5 Steamboat with metal cover and lower hull base, ironclad
Some appearance description normally ship girls have some ships parts around their body or they wore parts of the ships as their clothes.
This is some of the descriptions on those ship girls in the human form
Tier 1 ship: some of them have wood sticks on their shoulder and etc, have a dagger, sword, a spear as a weapon
Tier 2 ship: same as tier 1 but with the more advanced design of their clothes
Tier 3 ship: Same as tier 2 and some of them have mini cannons for firing
Tier 4 ship: Same as tier 3 but have a rod behind their behind, enable them to run much faster as the stream rushes out of the rod
Tier5 ship: Tier 4 but more armoured