ship rank 536
Decks: 3.1k
Hull: 17k approx
shield (unbuffed): 5k
shield (buffed 100%): 10k- well derp lol
attack (unbuffed) 7k
attack (30% buff)9.3k
defence (unbuffed):8.4k
defence (buff 20%)10k

Play style / goals?

I dont really have a set play style or goal.

then your doing fine

It depends on your ship preference.

SSB - WAAAAAAYYYYY Too big.

MSb- too big.

LSB- maybe a bit too small

IDC (I Don't Care)- Just right.

best ship plan right there.

It's not so much that your ship is too big, but that your defense can't compensate for the number of decks you have.

Is there any way you can up your mining production so you can afford your upkeep? If so, do that and switch away from the Builder profession ASAP. It's basically a profession that screams "I don't know how to manage my ship!" and encourages people to attack you. Going Aerlen or Xecti Fixer for the time being, if you can afford it, would be helpful for you while you improve your artifact production and ship.

It depends on what you do. The primary game plan of a MSB is to use modules according to different purposes. That is to say while you are looking to fight, you will have only energy, attack mods and efficient* hull/shield/def modules online and you need to have enough deck space for that. You might also need to be able to have some scan if you wish to find specific NPC or find some possibly weaker ship to take down.
When you wish to do a scan run, you will need all your scan mods along with, ideally, some energy mod.
When you wish to invade, you need decent energy and all attack and invasion attack mods
When you wish to guard a planet, you need to be able to have all your attack, defense module on and all efficient* hull/shield module on.
And so on.
The biggest need in those is what your ship need to be at, that is to say you can do everything at the best possible way according to your current tech and special mod availability.

On the other hand, LSB will want to keep everything except inefficient* hull/shield online at all time so that they don't need to juggle the mods between activity. The advantage would be ofc the less effort while the disadvantage is that you will have a bigger damage cap with little to no additional benefit while performing any and all activity.. (there is some additional benefit as you will have higher scan and cloak while fighting so you will have a chance of finding cloaked tin cans and hack better. But that's about it)

Now, you might mentioned the * keyword efficient. What does it mean for a defensive mod to be efficient? It need to make your ship's survival power increase after considering the damage cap increase it requires. If, for example, a mod increases your deck and hence damage cap by 1%, then that mod needs to provide at least 1%, preferably more extra hull+shield or defense or a partial combination of both(for example, a 0.6% increase in hull+shield as well as a 0.5% increase in defense will be efficient) Of course, considering that our ship can grow defensive stat WITHOUT increasing deck via brackets, xcell and helms overtime, a 1.0 efficiency now will become lower later. With that, personally I would not employ anything lower than 1.2 efficiency (that is to say the % increase in defensive stat is at least 1.2 times the % increase in deck) There are ofc modules with mixed stats where defensive use is only part of it. Then you need to consider whether or not you need the other stat and whether or not using a direct module of that other stat(for example a researched scanner instead of a def+scan mod) would yield a better result.

There is, IMO, a build beyond LSB. It would be the build where everything is kept on just because they can. But that, IMO, is only for players who are so strong such that it doesn't matter much or those that simply don't care.

I would probably go with that lol