Can one ever have too many cargo bays/ storage area? Meaning, is there a point when cargo space will begin to diminish ship space for modules? In example, 500 decks versus 1000 or 2000 storage space.

don't even put rank points into storage. just get tesseract containers and mass storage pods.

Early on, you probably want to put a few points into cargo space, but as you get your artifact points up, getting tesseract containers and mass storage pods will do the trick just fine. You need to have over 20 planets just to have enough storage for artifact points to get mass storage pods, but once you start getting them, yyou probably won't want to waste your rank points on cargo any more.

Do you have to have gotten the Mass Storage Pod as a tier reward before you can start getting them in the artifact draws? I've been waiting until I was over 20K artifact points before doing a draw hoping to get one, and I still haven't.

You rather want to get the tesseracts than the MSP, the Tesseract gives more space per spent AP then the MSP.

MSP Costs 20000 SP, gives 60 cargo = 333,33 AP per space
Tess costs 1750 AP, gives 10 cargo = 175 AP per space.

Yeah, only go for the MSP if you're really hurting for space for some reason, otherwise try not to get it.

It is better to get MSP's than spend rank points on cargo. I figure that when a player first gets to where he/she can draw MSP's, he/she probably needs them. I try to avoid them these days with over 6k cargo space, but it wasn't always like that. MSP's are a bit rare, so if you want them, you may need to try for a while.

i actually try for them every chance i get, and i still have difficulty drawing them. i find that once you amass around 80k artifact points, you get one around half the time.

When i store up little over 100k AP i usually get 1-2 when i empty the stores. along with 3-6 tesseracts.