I get that, i like to have a second opinion before making a decision to make sure it's the right one, that's what I'll do as of right now.

yea. i have the mining to back it up. at 9k/hr so 3b upkeep is not too harsh.
unless i dont happen to log in for a day.

Necrokristo.

Depends on how big you are going to make your ship. If there was a way to reduce decks I would remove shields first, work my way and lose energy, then low deck ratio defense, hull, low deck ratio attack and be left with just scan/cloak/%mods and 8+att/def:deck mods.

Personally recommend you get your E ratio to 10.1 asap because that can be held with just rank points, ignoring energy early on means at some point you are going to have to spend a lot of time on it later in ranks personally i run a 12.1 ratio which i'd still like to increase the things you'll spend most of your E on in later ranks in bases and purgers both have sucky energy ratio's i know a number of bigger ships who gone all tach route only to find themselves stagnant at higher ranks as they need to use a energy cube just to rank up.
that said tachs shouldn't be ignored a good aim is for 1k tach for every 100 ranks while maintaining a good energy ratio as you get higher this ratio will obviously increase.

Pfff you people and your puny upkeeps, its so cute.... you need a real man's upkeep, i just passed 10 B
As for the shields ivw got em and so far im happy with them.

Epic, do you intend to keep same number of decks and leave it average built ship or make it full deck ship? I'll drop a comment regarding of what you chose to, no point in typing for both sizes.

I'm going to max my attack, hull, defense and energy. I'm currently on the fence towards shields, this thread is making me think maybe I shouldn't add them, but I'm open to other opinions.

How max are you talking? Even including those dual use mods with questionable deck effectiveness?

If you'd chose to add extra decks to support the shield modules that would mean an increased damage cap. Obviously, you already know(I don't see the reasons for doubts about this decision) that the best damage/deck ratio is supported as defensive by hulls, not shields so you will face what, a bit more repairing when NPC'ing/pvp'ing/base battling but a bigger damage cap with a bad ratio(your disadvantage). Which means the more damage he can do to outpast your damage/deck ratio = even less hits to take you down with hull instead of shields. It's not like running a SSP where you just switch the energy mods off when consuming part of energy bar and dropping back the attack/defense/hull which are in best damage/deck ration possible. So if I'd have to vote for this I'd give it a big fat minus(and whoever says shield regenerate and sh1t and help you out - LOL - because whoever intends to disable you/base hits you back or NPC still does it anyway, they won't wait for your shield to recharge, it will be too fast)

Cheers.

For now yes, later on, well I'm still thinking.

Alright, so despite that going over my head mainly due to weariness, I believe you are against adding shields, so Elerian, why do you think they're so great then?

Just so I know, if I was going to streamline my ship a bit more, what modules would go, and which would stay?

well, to be honest, I have aprox same stats as you but, my decks roll around 1400 and my energy pool allows me auto-rank a couple of times daily with no problems(it doesn't mean that I do it tho).

Keep heavy nulls, put last hulls, don't keep modules which give 40 attack and 40 invasion or 30 and 30 or w/e unless you invade something, basically just keep mods with attack only(better deck ratio) - same for defense mods.

I get that too, before I wouldn't have considered it but now as I'm getting a load of ship-building artis, those poor stats are more and more unappealing. So go no higher than heavy nulls you say? And definitely no shield? What about special shield mods, any I should install?

In regards to which modules I should take off, and I'd quite like multiple opinions on this, but which ones exactly? Even a baseline deck ratio would work.

You should keep 8x heavy tethas, korth blasters, ion pulses(if you can afford get 2 radiant surge canons once you pass 400 if you wanna be a badass lol but I suggest rank 700 for them), the proteans, silthion exo platings, korteth platings, perfect syncopated, biometric sealers, scyth platings, kalvium platings and dark assembly boots.

Keep also all trans entropy drives(last tier) and 3 veloxes plus the sha'din hypervoiders. If you got space left put the dark phase engines as well. If you still have space after them you can start unloading exergonic inverters(last tier ofc) till you get bored(but in that order due to the deck/defense ratio)

If you still got decks left then with all these then we have a problem lol.

The Xecti disruptors and Psionic amp are the only ones which stand out. The Laz. Mind Controllers and the Bane weapons are reasonably efficient in their own right, so they can stay. A couple of modules (namely the Litheor ones) I don't really know what they do, so...

Mate, the xecti disruptors got just a pathetic 2,6 ratio and the laz mind controllers have a an attack/deck ratio of 3.0. How could you recommend him to keep them? Even exotic pulsers have double of that. And banes have just 5,7 if I remember right, none of which are worth keeping.

Anyone wanna chip in here at all, as already stated, I like my second opinions.

banes aren't too bad. especially when invading. Thet others... hold onto them and use them for invasions.

Should also have room for aegis'

That is my opinion on shield : Might increase your damage cap BUT I know with a shield amplifier I can kill tons of npc without them going over my shield because it does regenerate fast (over 40k shield an hour)

That is my opinion on deck: People seems to think having a big damage cap is the end of the world yet with a 2200 damage cap its rare someone hit me for more then 200-300 a hit. Only base may be near (1500-1800). Depends on your style, I decided to go with all attack module, defense module, shield module, hull module and energy module. The Devices I add are only % or give : Attack/energy.