I have decided to Rank freeze because I have come to realise my ship is crap! Can you please comment on what I should look to improve.

Rank 250 Aerlen Fixer
Combat Reputation: Savage
Battles 54984 (Legend)
Player Kills 490
Deaths from Players 204
Non-Player Kills 3568

Decks 1600
Cargo 6050
Engineers 300
Tactical Officers 277
Helmsmen 450
Scientists 625

Attack: 2403
Defense: 3059
Scan: 876
Cloak: 1660

Upkeep: 774.9M
Hull 9198
Shield 1725

Research 4436 research / hour
Minerals 2587 units / hour
Artifacts 2424 points / hour

I am not maxed out on planets, so this I know I can work on.

Weapons
Light Null Ray x4
Dominion Cannon - Mark III x2
Vortul Blast Phaser x4
Charged Bane Emitter
Atmospheric Decimator x2
Ion Pulse Ballistae (Another x2 not installed)
Lazuli Mind Controller x3
Combat Analyzer
Prototype Mech XV

Energy
XRP Battery Pack x4
Q-Pedd Ansible x2
Genetarr Transmitter - Mark II x4
Q-Pedd Logic Servo x2
F.A.T.H.E.R.
Chron-Transistor
Omicron Injector
Silthion T-Plasma Hub

Note: I have taken most Energy mods off to make room for other mods, but also because
I am rank freezing! With all mods on my Energy is 2900

Sensors
Continuum Parser x2
Tetra-Seek Targeter x3
Lepus Detector
Stryll Prey Tracker x2
Sha'din AI Core x4
AI Supercomputer

Hull
Stabilized Fermionic Armor x5
Scruuge Hypernode
Korteth Plating x2
Stryll Confinement Chamber x4
Protean Armory x2

Shields
T.O. Force Barrier x2
T.O. Harmonic GigaPulser x4
Harmonic Resonator
Q-Phase Battery Array

Cloaking
Anti-Tachyon Jammer x2
Alarri Probability Core
Bio-Signature Scrambler x4
CipherBot x2
Zolazin Jammer x2
Gamma Channeler

Defenses
Energy Nullifier x2
Silthion T-Phase Utricle x2
BM50 Convoy Shuttle x3
Dark Complex Thruster x2
Dark Ring Thruster x2
Auto-Evasion Node
Trinity-Core Drive
Thrust Stabilizer

the only thing i can sugges is more arti / hour if you going to stay with that deck size or more mining / hour if your going to increase it so that you can afford the bigger mods sooner.

of course you want more arti / hour to better your ship, but thats going to take alot longer than affording the bigger ship mods, its a numbers game really.

effectivly the weakness in your ship design is your crew compliment.

Best advice I have for you is DO NOT freeze.
Your arti is way way to low for a freeze to fix anything.

Drop most cloak shield and scan.
Add rest of heavy nulls.
Npc more.

Stop using rank points for decks.
Put into tacs and maybe some energy.

What planets do you have?

totally disagree with this. until you figure out your plan for improvement, freezing is the BEST thing you can do.



if you are full up on your planet slots ... now would be an ideal time to spend some GP to abandon your crappiest planets and replace them with great planets. your colonization costs are still fairly reasonable at this stage. you have deck space to put on the best scan modules, so go on a big scan run. collect purgers and then do it again. and again if you have to. no ranking up required. and yeah, like elerian said, prisoners go to crew, not decks.




this stuff makes more sense. cloak shield and scan should only be used if you have a specific purpose in mind. otherwise, take them off and put on guns and hull. at rank 253, i have more hull than you with no fixer bonus.

so, focus on scanning and colonizing / conquering better planets. get caught up on your research if you do not have +12 planetary production buildings yet. read up on the wiki to figure out which mission chains you will start to work on once you inevitably get tired of freezing. npc when there is nice stuff and leave the crap to time out.

it's not a fast process, but WAY better than ranking up into the range of even tougher ships at higher ranks.

2 year normal ranking ship is better than a 2 year freeze ranking ship.

Yea, your ships not that bad, just your production and crew need work. I wouldn't freeze rank either, but go slow if you want, just choose the NPC's you need and missions you need. Only go for arti planets and work on maxing 1-2 toxics.
And no more rank points into decks.
Compare to my stats at
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=32982

Well, duh, the normal ranker has more planet slots. However, what good is a high rank if your ship is no tougher than wrapping paper? The good in freeze ranking is that it buys you time in which to improve your ship for your rank. Given that the only people I have really seen be against freezing have never had a problem with PvP, consider the fact that maybe, just maybe, these people cannot PvP with any kind of efficiency or success. Also, it is insane at the lower ranks now. Almost every ship I see within 30 ranks of me (rank 219) have Nulls, and some have Thetas. Add that to Fermionic plating and a crapload of Konqul fixers. There are some pretty darn tough ships out there in my rank range. The only way I can catch up is by freezing or ranking so slow that I might as well be freezing. In other words, it buys you time, which you can use to improve your ship.
Okay, that's the end of my little mini-rant.

On topic; all you really need is to get your artifact up by any means necessary, and improve your crew. If you have not yet done this, I highly recommend you get +12 planetary buildings and Obviation Shields. Your ship is actually pretty good (in my eyes at least) except for your attack.

MOAR ARTIFACT PRODUCTION!!!

Yes, state the obvious, that'll help him...

I will start from the top and go down...



More kills before it is too late. Otherwise decent.



Decks... What are you doing? Decks! STAWP!

Seriously... No more decks... More Tac Officers and Engineers instead. I would go with Tac first to get your attack to at least 4k.



No reason to have that scan and or cloak... 50 scan is ALL you need while not on a scan run or searching for Caelon or something...
Cloak I would keep low as possible...



Hull is good. Upkeep is fine. I wouldn't worry about shields... Just get your artifact production up for more X-Charges



There that is... MORE ARTIFACTS! Your research and Minerals are both FINE. Artifacts need to be at LEAST double if not TRIPLE what you have...



No issues with Energy



Uninstall all this except the Parsers and maybe the Tetras... Everything else is rather useless.



Get your last Protean

No issues with Shields



No... Just no... The only one there that is understandable is the Probability Core and that is ONLY if you have it fully upgraded. No re-searchable Cloaking thingies should be on your ship to be honest. Maybe the Bio Sig Scramblers for their hull boost...

Defenses also fine.

So yeah, you have a good ship, you just need to do some cleaning up. Get that Artifact production UP AND AT EM though! That is like running around with your pants down...

Edit: Oh, and get your Nulls fully researched and THEN put all eight on. That will do wonders for your attack.