What's a good build to look for if I want to keep myself out of PVP?

Aerlen Fixer, all defense, hull, and shields.

Low-ish decks filled with Energy, Cloaking, Hull and Defense.
Aerlen Fixer until you unlock Xecti, then Xecti Fixer.
High AP production to supply plenty of ship-building artifacts and halcyon/CAmps.

Ah yeah, constantly running Calming Amps and Halcs would help as well. Like Flag said, you would probably want to keep the minimum decks possible required to install the mods you want.

If ssb a laz fixer might be a good option too. Can't debuff hull.

You're all wrong. Go 1 deck, 4 helmsmen every rank. Only install hull modules and go Aerlen Fixer. Totally impractical, but no-one will mess with you.

On the flipside, my advise is the exact opposite. Get only enough decks for your energy modules and relays, then shove the rest into engineers. If you opt to NPC, just go with a normal, balanced build. Cloak is unneeded, so you can go for a defensive slant, but otherwise good defences are not really needed to NPC. Just repair when you get online.

Cant believe noone said this one yet
zolazin spy. High cloak, def, hull

40% racial, 20% proffesion, coalition database for a bit more, but thats at higher levels. High cloak keeps you out of the arena for a while especially sub 350+.

And only installing what you need to.

good suggestions so far- xecti fixer would be the other one no one has mention- they are a bugger to kill with the attack defence bonus

oops- edit- didn't read darths post very well did i

Only works to a point though. more scan then there is cloak.

by which point you should be able to more or less brick yourself to where you're not appealing enough.

But that's usually at a very high rank, so i'd say go the cloak method for a while then go the Xecti/Lazuli fixer route everyone else has mentioned when you start getting targetted more.

So what about defensive modules, shields, cloak, and hull? Which are the important ones, do you still pvp early on for the Dominions and then stop, do you raid left-overs (as opposed to having to kill and raid) to get the protean armories, which missions give you good def mods? Will you be leveling mostly through npc killing and missions?

End of the Octafari chain there is the Kalvium Platings, the first Silthion mission is good. The Scruuge X-Deflectors are worthwhile if you get the chance to get those. The Dom3s are a given for any set up, as are the proteans. The Zolazin Jammers and Cipherbots are nice for cloaking. Shield modules are a meh topic anyway. The Biomimetic sealers are good if you get doublesies, though I forget which mission.

*Off topic: My spell check accepts doublesies?

Biomimetic sealers come from "Surgical Precision".

Which is the first of the Bioship chain.

Most PvPers are very low with energy, so adding hull and def will be the main key. But its hard to prevent PvPers attacking you, cuz they are quite aggressive attackers and would probably use energy cube to kill... just to substance their ego

With my stats, I have 4k+ max energy which more than enough killing several ships

lol i top out at under 900 total, and i can plow through around 20ish depending on how much hull they have. cant imagine what id do with 4k