I was lucky in that I gained all the rank for both navies during GPP. I didn't even notice as back then, there was no purpose to the ranking. We didn't have rank locked ships. Consequently, when the rank requirement dropped for all the Federal and Imperial ships, I only had 2 ranks to play out for the Cutter...already was a rear Admiral in the Fed navy so I got to play in a Corvette as soon as it appeared.
Since the last patch (1.5.04) and the temporary fix for the missions, I've been doing the rounds of the BB's in the Python... just legal trade stuff mainly, no shadow delivery or fail if scanned data ones.
In 2 days, I've advanced from 4% Rear Admiral to 39%... just flying around all over the place dropping cargo without even noticing the advancement. I suppose it helps that I already have the Cutter and Corvette plus Elite trade rank, nothing left to grind for... but it sure has been fun going back to the way I started playing the game as opposed to grinding for rank, credits or status.
I've really enjoyed ED over the last few days...sold my Cutter since I'll never grind the slave routes again and bought an Anaconda, Cobra and an Asp for less than the Cutter was worth on it's own...and still had spare change after fitting them for purpose.
I sold the Corvette a few weeks ago since it served no useful purpose that my FDL couldn't already do for much less cash. I don't really pew pew unless I'm bored and mostly PvE.
The Corvette was fun... but utterly pointless for someone who wants to play the game, not just kill anything with a hollow rectangle on the radar.