I know this has been discussed before a number of times, but I am interested to see opinions on my current situation.

I am currently in 2 state of minds, details as follows:

I am currently at 4402 decks (have been for a long time now), half of me is saying that compared to a maxed decks ship thats what roughly 800-1000 damage less being done to me at my cap, whether vs a big base or powerful ship.

The other half is saying having a damage cap of 2201 isn't going to stop the rank 1000s hitting me (not that being disabled really matters to me) and is it really worth the lack of scan and cloak that makes me susceptible to hacks. At rank 791 it is getting harder and harder to hack people as well. (not that I hack a lot, but the ability to is nice)

My point is, ssbs and msbs definitely have major advantages but at what point do decks become less important once you pass what's considered a msb into a large sized ship.

Mind sharing whats on your ship?

[size=85]Colossal Galaxy Destroyer
Ships/Allies Sehrin, Bioship Ally, Anubix, AI Assault Drone
Weapons Heavy Thetacron Cannon x8, Dark Smuggler Chassis, Sniper Drone, Radiant Surge Cannon - Mark V x2, Galakis Pirate Ray, Dominion Auto-Blaster x4, Taltherian Sentry x4, T-Plasma Gemini Cannon x3, Vorean Bio-Ray x2, Korteth Twin-Blaster x4, Hypercharged Bane Emitter x3, Leviathan Rift-Emitter x4, Composite Ray - Type D x2, Composite Ray - Type S, Composite Ray - Type C, Overcharged Bane Emitter, Ion Pulse Ballistae x4, Psionic Amplifier, Atmospheric Decimator x2, Lazuli Mind Controller x3, Exotic Pulser x3, Drone Cluster, Combat Analyzer, Prototype Mech XV
Energy Proxy-Universe Reactor - Mark IV x3, Xathe Containment Hold, T-Plasma Dynamo x4, Surge Plexus x3, XRP Warp-Charge Pack x4, Lazuli Tevrazon Core x4, Siladon Mine Cores, Q-Pedd Assembly Line x2, Encephalon Core x4, Q-Pedd Logic Servo x2, Genetarr Transmitter - Mark II x4, F.A.T.H.E.R. x2, Silthion T-Plasma Hub x3, HyperChannel Relay x4, Krionite Transducer, Omicron Injector, Dark Mutagen Battery, Exotic Dynamo, Chron-Transistor
Sensors Continuum Parser x4, Lepus Revealer, Merged DataNode, Tetra-Seek Targeter x3, Zortah's Interface Jack v.2 x3, Litheor Tetractic Crystal x4, Exo-Temporal Translator x4, Voliir Modulator - Mark II x3, Decryption Senary-Frame x2, AI Supercomputer, Flux Ringdisc, Tachyon Router
Hull Perfect Syncopated Plating x5, Kalvium Fortified Plating x2, Shell of Bane, Scythe Plating x4, Dark AssemblyBot x3, Korteth Plating x2, BioMimetic Sealer II x4, Silthion Exo-Plating x4, Protean Armory x3, Impact Absorber, Tractor Beam
Shields Mega-Coil Repulsor x3, Aegis Capacitor x3, Q-Phase Battery Array, Field Balancer, Harmonic Resonator
Cloaking Inverse Flux Jammer x2, Dimensional Mask - Mark III x2, Sha'din Security Terminal - Type A x4, Alarri Probability Core, Coalition Database x2, Litheor Data Interface x3, CipherBot x2, Gamma Channeler
Defenses Trans-Entropy Drive - Mark III x4, Exergonic Inverter - Mark III x4, Velox Thruster x3, Sha'din Hypervoider x4, Dark Phase Engine x4, BM50 Convoy Shuttle x3, Silthion T-Phase Utricle x4, Subquantum Tracing Console, Auto-Evasion Node, Subspace Compressor, Chron-Pulse Drive, Thrust Stabilizer[/size]

Scan: 2290
Cloak: 5952

I know I can be a lot more efficient with what I have installed, ie modules that provide invasion bonuses (eg dark smugglers chassis and decimators etc), and if I want to hack effectively or defend I could constantly rearrange ship to max stats for the purpose I want.

Are you failing hacks?
Or are you not same to hack? It seems you should have plenty of cloak.

At this stage I can hack fairly well on the bottom end of my bt, but I am noticing more ships on my bt that I can't hack with my standard build as im gaining ranks, yesterday in 20 hacks I crit failed twice (one of them was a VM 16x arty lol), Im sure that was just RNG badluck. I get a bit lazy rearranging my build all the time, I am daily either invading, npcing and basing once or twice a day. I have been hacking a bit lately as I want to get the battle market items before cloak debuffs are needed on the bt.

Sounds like you need more scan.
Id get the titan core scanners, and get scan composite rays.
What level is bioship?

Yeah scan is pretty much what is tempting me to increase decks purely as id like to have some scan and cloak not either/or and not sacrificing attack or any more defence/hull.

My bio ship is rank 86, am planning to get it to rank 100 shortly on the daily missions tho.

You'll probably want 5k scan when you hit rank 900 later. Unless you're not interested in those bigger elites.

Even at my rank (1600+) I don't need more scan to find ships on the BT and hacking is there if I want to do it.

I've never seen the advantage of a smaller ship build. It's harder to disable you, but being disabled costs you virtually nothing. And if you're offline, you can be disabled no matter what.

So you save a couple nanos, but have to constantly swap modules in and out?

I can see it more with something like Golgotha's build, where his damage cap is really low. But MSB's kind of waffle and don't provide a major benefit

Bases and online defense.
I myself can't see adding decks to fit bad hull and def mods that actually make me weaker

Reputation... Once you get known as a big old energy drain, people leave you alone unless you royally piss them off. If someone knows you will take a large amount of energy to disable, they are more likely to pass you over in favour of a cheaper target.

if you want to see how you compare against 10 pilots: ship log showdown

the most apparent advantage of more decks is increased attack [60+ attack strength] which gets you better planets and a higher artifact point ratio [elerian / Rusty / KJ Reed]. ranking more quickly can boost your artifact point ratio quickly as well [adsibearsawsome] but not to the heights that more raw attack will garner.

The old deck question, someone asked me why so many decks, currently 4418. The simple answer is I cant be bothered to swap stuff and slow ranking, for a good dmg to rank ratio (to me) is a bit boring. By my reckoning I need at least another 1000 decks (quite possibley 1500-2000) before I'll be happy, but my goal is mod and medal collection. The simple answer is if you want more decks then stick them on, if you get by and are happy with what you got then dont.

Yeah but using RPs on crew members other than spamming it on decks would benefit you more... When the time has come, you'll have a ton of ship-bots, enough to double your current decks. Once you do, you'll ask yourself why you kept putting your RPs into your decks instead of putting into your crew total.

I guess what temps me about this is the ability to have scan and cloak at the same time (5k scan for npcs) while having maxed attack, energy and defence (defence is needed at 4402 decks vs 2k decks).

I have been comparing the difference in decks using the damage calculator, results are as follows:

Someone with the exact same stats as me but with 6500 decks vs my current decks at 4402 decks
You Deal: 514(284 to 760) Damage.
You Take: 759(419 to 1123) Damage.
You die in: 72(49 to 129) hits.
Your opponent dies in: 106(72 to 191) hits.
Thats a difference of 34 hits (170 energy) to kill me

Im only really ever hit by ranks 1ks plus, as a point of comparison, I would say they would be attacking me with rougly 50k (they are buffed) attack 45k def and 80000 health (general assumptions). Results are as follows

rank 1k plus with above stats (assuming 6500 decks)
me with 4402 decks
You Deal: 1007(580 to 1397) Damage.
You Take: 369(202 to 557) Damage.
You die in: 217(144 to 397) hits.
Your opponent dies in: 54(39 to 94) hits.

me with 6500 decks:
You Deal: 1488(856 to 2063) Damage.
You Take: 369(202 to 557) Damage.
You die in: 217(144 to 397) hits.
Your opponent dies in: 37(27 to 64) hits.

difference: 17 hits (85 energy) between 4402 decks and 6500 decks.

Assuming the above 1k stats are correct, is 85 extra energy really worth the smaller deck space and inability to have maxed cloak and scan on my ship. I would say it would be worth it IF I was being attacked by people similar in strength to me but not worth it when being hit by ships significantly stronger than me. Something I need to think about. Thoughts?

most rank 1k's are no where near 50k strength, even buffed.

this is true, it was a pretty big assumption, it was more the upper scale of the types of ships hitting me. I will revise the strength when I have more time.