A: Ditch the blue font so people don't get a headache trying to read your posts...
B: He probably dumped a bunch of rank points on Tactical Officers (attack) and Helmsmen (defense)

You won't see the effect of the crew on the other guys ship screen.

You mean that is your default color??? If so then highlight all of the text in your post and click on the white color box on the right side of your screen....

B is wrong answer.. Investing rank points into helmsmen is total waste if that player wants to stick to scout class (max damage = decksize/2) all the time.. Best just to invest all into tactical officers to replace tech guns due to restricted decksize.. So. Doesn't matter if you got defense of 1000 as scout (decksize = 40) vs 10k attack enemy and you will see 20 damage per hit from him. If you reduce defense to 0 against same ship, you WILL still see 20 damage per hit.. That shows the investment in helmsmen is a total waste..

Heck, LeRaine had her scout as rank 130 that took my star destroyer down when I was in 200ish when I was offline... I did retaliate back but it took a while to take her down due to tiny damage per hit that I inflicted on her..

Best scout design would be to put all rank points into tactical officers and some into engineers. Get extremely high artifact production because research means so little due to restricted decksize. You need very high AP so you can enjoy getting xcharges and brackets. Bigger HP your scout have, longer it can survive the attack by anybody.. Imagine that your scout has 10k hp total and still at 40 decksize? It definitely will cost 2,500 energy (500 attacks) by any gigantic ships even galaxy class just to take your scout down.. You would easily use that time to repair your hull if you are online because it just take "forever" for that player to bring you down even with fast clicks of 500 times.. You will NEVER worry about defense AT all heh thanks to your tiny size as your best defense to maneuver through rain of beams..

I'm gonna do that, put all my points into attack officers

Eh, that may not be such a good idea. The tactical bonus quickly becomes outdated in tactical officers. Besides, decks are probably since you may change your mind about having a massive amount of attack. Besides, you don't want to be what I call, "An eggshell with a hammer." You can't just dish out punishment, you have to be able to take some. I would put it in decks, so you can use it for anything you want, or salvage from disabling NPCs.

You're missing the point - the whole idea is that by not adding decks, the person can't take more than a tiny amount of damage. By using artifacts to bulk up the ship without adding decks, they wouldn't need to add much defense.

One problem I'd see is that if they don't add decks, they can't add scanning capability - finding new planets would get very tough after a certain point, especially since scanners are big.

Agreed, besides, then you have no space for the actual good weapons, and no space for energy, defenses, shields, or hull armor.

Well, you're still missing the point--they don't need to put defenses because the maximum amount of damage they can take is very low, and they can get hull and shields from artifact points. Not as much, but enough, considering the low maximum damage.

Personally I prefer to take the minimum amount of damage. It's even lower than the maximum...

Exactly. That's why I became a Genetarr. Then the enemy can't scratch my paint, and then I can whupe them while my damage is minimal.

Yes, that's what you did, but that's not what we were talking about. We were talking about having a small ship build, especially with a lot of artifacts. Imagine Nocifer's example of someone whose max damage is 20, with my ship, which has about 700 hull and shields each without modules. It would take 70 attacks to disable that ship at max damage, and I don't even get that many artifact points. Even if your max damage was 100, it would take 14 attacks to disable that person at max damage. Having a small ship is probably the best for PvP, especially if you focus on artifact planets.

really? have you looked at some of the attack Ratings? Nocifers, for one. HAHAHAHHAHA

It doesn't matter how high your attack is, you can only do so much damage to a person. I read somewhere that it's decks/2, but I'm not sure where I read that so I'm not sure it's reliable. Regardless, there's a maximum amount of damage you can do to someone based on the amount of decks they have, no matter how much attack you have and how little defense they have, as Nocifer said in this thread already.

I think the main problem is you will have no space for scanners, so where are they getting the planets with artifact resources that are worth anything? That is the real question.

I am all for fun unusual ways of playing the game (hence the reason I advocate slow play). However, you really should point out for the new people taking this path that even for all their artifact planets, there will only be 3 things that will benefit their ship... xcells, brackets, and rescued prisoners. They will not be able to add those ever so sweet ship bots, and they are more likely to wind up with even more junk in their tight cargo space than most other players. I am not knocking the ship design at all... just think it would be good to give further warning to players attempting this.

You forgot Ship-bots and the androids.

I forgot the androids, correct.. but they can't add the ship bots.

Actually you'll still need some small amount of decks for hulls, but hulls add a lot of hitpionts for very little deck space. When it comes time to scan planets all they have to do is drop all their hulls and add scanners. The big question is wether to add decks to your ship for power cores or to just rely on engineers. I'd still say you want 20 decks for relays irreguardless.