I love the Rising Tide's sheer size and strength! It has a great arsenal of weapons at its disposal for both attacks and defense. It's basically got a coat of turrets allowing you to go into battle trusting its passive defense.
I only have three complaints: the mining drone does not seem capable of re-docking, the elevator does not go up to the bridge, and the large cube in the rear of the ship takes up room that could easily be repurposed as a docking bay which would allow you to remotely open/close it and release a fighter/drone.
Other than all of that, the Rising Tide has so far been my capital ship as it is both a menacing and trustworthy adversary when it comes to battle and travel of almost any shape or size!
The elevator bug was fixes in the 1.2 version. I would suggest downloading it again if you want the fixed version.
As for the cargo. You can always replace the cargo crate with something else like a small shuttle.