The only benefit of high rank is planet slots. At some point you are just ranking as a side effect of npcing but high rank actually makes them harder. I would recommend people get the pvp modules as early as possible because pvp becomes a nightmare (traps and more irritating the higher you go), even before rank 100 if possible. It'll rank slower but if you are constantly winning battles the xp is decent so it won't be too slow, or too long to charge energy.

Always put 5 rank up pts to engineers unless you got plenty of excess, then put TAC. If you cannot fit all your high efficiency weapons, decks may be acceptable but you can get bots for it later from AP.

My minimum planet spec is VL/rich AP. No point in anything less, or any other resource except another 15x mining or plasma.

Out of curiousity BinaryMan or Frail,

I have been playing for a while now, mostly slow ranking/pvp (rank 145), I read early on that points should all be decks, but I wonder now if all decks is the way to go. I would like to keep my damage cap low, and also be able to autorank if I feel like it, or come close. At 853 decks, I've started dumping rank points into engineers/tact officers. I read that you (Binary) went with a ssb at the low ranks, roughly what decks did you have in the lower ranks?
If I rely on pulling artis (approaching 4k/hr), will it be sustainable for me to never put rank points into decks again?

4k/hr is about 1 prisoner / day, it won't help much. I did only the decks I could tolerate, because my resources are rather high and my tech was growing fast after reset. That situation is different than most people who need the decks more just to get some stats. For me it was about fitting all 8 weapons, which quickly because mid to high tech and required more space. I was ranking too fast to keep up without some decks. In your case just make use of what you have and start doing energy. You can unlock most missions and I kept at 700-900 decks for some time, then eventually got to 2500 or so which fits all the important stuff.

Do you have a list of modules that you consider not worth installing ever?

Is the VL a hard minimum on size, or do you grab lower sizes with higher artifact availability (e.g. L MR, or L 4x)?