i reset to fix my battle rep and im starting to have a hard time with pvp heres my ship layout (to give you a good idea of whats going on) Sillixx, fixer rank 22 and counting, space 107 (full) attack 275 defence 89 hull 319. modules wepons, 1 dominion cannon mark 1, 2 Graviton shearers, Defence a inertial dampener mark 2, hull 1 merged microgell armour any help is appreatiated thanks

at your rank most people have tiny little energy bars...hull is very important to stay alive. attack is great for killing people though try to get to get npc dropped weapons and raid enough people for protean armories (you can just wait for someone else to kill the people on your bt and raid after) it should boost you hull nice and high making you rather difficult to kill.

go high hull, high attack, mid defense.
- when you PvP (if you have energy cubes), you can drop the def, kick in energy mods and then use the energy cube, you will get max amount of kills that way.
Dont worry so much about defense. focus hull

Before everyone gets all hip to this thread and gives you 15 different routes to go, understand this one thing first and foremost.

REPUTATION DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING.

yeah, we all know that rep doesn't mean anything past rank 100 or so. before that tho, the better your rep, the less chance someone will target you over someone else on their bt, meaning that if you are on an npc-run or taking someone else's ship down, you don't have to worry about interruptions. the npc is not a big deal, you can always go back, but the opposing ship will get downed by someone else.

as for the original poster ... yes, build up your hulls for when you are offline. when you are online, switch the hulls out for the biggest attack modules and go on your attack run. when you are out of energy, switch back to the hull modules.

Agreed, i don't get why everyone reckons Aerlen Fixer is better then Konqul Fixer

No defence at that level, I'm only beginning to put on defence at rank 300, shows you how useless (yes I said it) defence is to a certain extent. Go all out hull, weapons and a bit of energy on the side. Also to help with raiding go 4/3decks to 1/2 engineers and tactical officers.

Heres another few tips:

As soon as you can, change from sillix fixer to something else, anything else. Your just gonna get into the sillix trap of not being able to change cos you dont have the deck space.

Try to keep your decks low-ish, atm you will take 7ish shots to kill, I would love to have you on my BT, I love to kill sillix's cos they are much easier to kill.

If you wanna make yourself harder to kill, add defence. Take off 1 gun and add the best defence you can.

Lastly, I have been taught this thing called "Ice Fishing" basically what littlefluffy said, keep checking your bt for disabled folk and raid them. Makes getting the Proteans much easier.

Bob - newly reset

yep, i'd agree with Bob on these points. my deck is low enough that it takes a minimum of 28 shots to knock me out of the sky. anyone willing to spend that much energy on lil' ol' me deserved their red badge.

and yeah, 'ice fishing' is how i got to the raids leaderboard today ... along with the TMs now being more readily available and purchasable on the GTC (thanks Dan !)

I always love how i disagree with everyone on this topic

1. Combat rep has no real functional purpose -> therefore it does not matter in terms of relative game mechanics


Sillix is 'ok' at the beginning because it affords you more space to add more stuff HOWEVER [ I always gauge things as stand alone, I do not take into account bases, or higher levels supporting others. ]
1. thats more upkeep, at low levels that may or may not be a problem depending on where your priorities are.
2. yes sillix, like builder can be a major crutch for some people that they find hard to come off of.
3. I find that most sillix players have generally weak ships because they depend to highly on that race / profession [ builder ]

The defence / hull argument:

To call defense at any level useless is an enormous oversight.
1. people who pvp at low levels often imlore the glass cannon build, and are use to killing people quickly.


2. defense scan and cloak are major oversites for people at that rank range.


In the end its all in how you play the game, what your goals are, and where your focus is. Not saying this will work for everyone but it did it for me.

-> Vygoid Spy till around rank 250.

Ill still say the "glass cannon" build works. need max guns and hull. helps to have better than average research in both. only def i used was npc ones. hull attack energy and good npc defenses. nothing else til later as it will raise your cap. worked for me and i had to racial or professional benefits at the time.

im not discounting that it doesnt work though after reviewing my post i realized that i did forget to leave out that lass cannon can be a trap, that some find hard to get out of.

I will agree. This strategy only works for a little while, and you have to be ready to add def as your decks go up. Even keeping decks low though won't entirely work as res only goes so far. (assuming not ssb)

This is true for the majority of the time I've been playing the game I've been a glass cannon, but then a couple of months back i started adding defence, it's an incredibly slow process, but I am only relying on ship-bots without an exactly kingly arti production. Don't get me wrong, it's decent, just far from where it could be.

and the majority of my kills have been glass cannons It amazes me when I still find them at my level.

I still find people without any defence modules installed.

1.)Sillix fixer is a great way to start the game. This so called "sillix trap" only affects the woefully unprepared.... plan ahead for race/profession changes. Sillix will allow you to equip more offense AND defense if you store up a few extra decks. Konkul and Aerlen are also good choices but are in no way superior until higher ranks.
2.)Defense IS important to your survival at low ranks. Those tiny energy bars get drained a lot faster vs a high defense ship. People will remember your ship after they spend a ton more energy than they wanted to for a simple badge. They will avoid you in the future. My defense has been higher than my attack since day 1 (even though my attack was still as high as possible) and people learned quickly not to bother me. (With the exception of people at the high end of your badging range who will typically overpower you regardless)
3.)Get your badge items asap. Myself and my co-leader Huluk coined the term "Ice Fishing" mentioned above. Using multiple open GL windows to moniter everyone on the BT will get you all your armories within a week. (Faster depending on how many TMs you have available)

+1, Too many of these kinds around my bt.

"Before that"? Most of the people I know still won't check Insane Rep ships on their BT, regardless of the fact that some of them suck horribly (mid-100s).

I also see Laughables with pretty good ships being disabled (better than the Insanes on tab), and I would bet money that it was solely due to their rep.

So while Rep doesn't mean anything in itself, the players of the game give it meaning insomuch as having a better rep leads to you being disabled less often (and therein spending fewer credits on repairing). You could be a rank 150 with 2.5k attack and 3k defense with 5 Neutronium Hulls and other miscellaneous hulls installed, if you're Laughable there's still a much higher chance of you being disabled than if you were Insane, just due to the status and the misconceptions associated with it.