My ship has been a 100% deck build since rank 1. I rank at a reasonable pace but by no means fast so I have a sturdy ship fitted with alot of modules. I just hit rank 270 and passed 2,000 decks currently sitting on 2,009, the downside is I rarely succeed in raiding and with a paltry 99 engineers I feel at least that I have quite a small energy pool. Currently I'm putting all prisoners into deck points with these, ship bots and the 5 rank points i've averaged roughly 10-11 deck increase per rank.

I was starting to consider either attributing rank up points or prisoner points differantly, or is it still to early and should I continue to pump up decks, any thoughts?

well.... i know nothing about anything you are experiencing.... but..... i would suggest raging up the Xts-9 mission if you haven't already and/or any other mission that could result in a crew member death. cant loose what you dont have

Not as easy as might seem like unless has hasn't used those android helmsmen and android scientists artifacts. I know I tried it before. However, it might also be possible that he could end up with negative amounts for crew as was posted before by someone who got -1 tactical officer.

I have been using my Android helmsmen/scientists, but I have a rather modest AP production so very limited numbers of android crew. The XTS missions would probably be a logical thing to do but I have got other missions I would prefer to do. as previously mentioned with only a small ammount of engineers I haven't got alot of energy to put into extra missions. And ultimately when I do those missions the crew will die regardless of how many I have, I would prefer to lose 1 of X000's later on then 1 of the couple hundread I currently have.

drop to 3 decks 1 engineer 1 tactical. Artifacts pulls should bring you the helms and scientist.

for me i stopped going all deck at rank 225. At rank 225 i went

5 leveling rank points- decks
2/3 resc pris points- engineers
1/3 resc pris points- tac officers

that worked really well for me for a while, all the way up to 300. my energy is around 2400 (including the supernova generators) and i have around 2100 decks. however, after rank 300 i decided to try to slow the inevitability of flamehawks for as long as possible. so i switched from 2/3 rescpris points engineers to 2/3 tac officers, and 1/3 engineers. i now have almost 4000 attack unbuffed, with only 2 thetacrons. its all about how you play the game and the stats you want. for me, i want a ship that has every module in the game, and has a crazy amount of attack and defense. my androids are picking up the defense bill and my prisoners are picking up the attack.

honestly, if you dont care about rank keep going all deck. youll level slower, but itll be worth it if you can afford your bigger and better ship for someone ur rank.

I have not yet experienced where you are, but there are several higher ranks who have ship bots rusting in their cargo bays. You are wise to try and plan for the future of your ship. I have heard it suggested you should add decks only to about 2200-2300. After that, you should put those points from rank into crew because your artifact production (bots/prisoners) will carry you the rest of the way to being a 4,400 + Collossal Galaxy Destroyer.

CREW! Get away from decks for a while. Good lord. At your level you are so far behind you have no idea. Unless you have some crazy artifact production, you're screwed!!!!!!!

Seriously though, go for crew. Crew are FAR better than decks.

I'm at 2500 decks, now putting level points into engineers and prisoners into decks. At about 3000 decks I think I'll start putting prisoners into tactical officers.

That's sort of what I did and at about the same point.

Now I am 2 deck, 2 engineers, 1 tact per level (or 1 of each from a prisoner).

I was starting to feel I was falling behind due to failing 95% of attempted raids. Thanks for the advice everyone, looks like I just need to work out a distribution that works for me, maybe keeping my rank up points for decks and prisoners into crew untill i'm nearer 3,000 decks. As for my artifact production i'm at 3,168/hour without anything to compare against I imagine its around average at best.

Average is loser talk. You have to be the best. Look up Nocifer's old posts about crew. It is true that crew is far more efficient at almost everything than decks.

You add crew until the toilets start overflowing.

More crew = better raids.

I'm 269 and doing what Ferrus said:

5 rank points in engineers
Rescued Prisoners go to decks.
Ship-bots of course go to decks.

Right now I've got 5,500 AP/hour. At some point I'll switch the prisoners over to make Tac Officers, but I'm still on heavy null rays for now. Once I hit more of a ceiling on guns I'll pour more into officers.

I started the game with the same plan as you did. I even spent 50$ when I started just to make sure I have a complete set of weapons at rank 70. Somewhere at 2300 rank points I stopped adding decks using my rank points. I started using my rank points for tactical officers for more attack and engineers for more energy (since Androids can add helmsmen and scientist anyway). If you have high enough artifact per hour I suggest you stop using rank points on deck space, just use the ship-bots for the deck space. Sooner or later you will not need any decks and you will start stockpiling your ship-bots.

After 500 decks i got 500 engineers the i want to 1000 then 1000 now am it around 17oo+ engineers 2250+ deck. After i hit 3k decks im going to get 2k engineers then get around 500 tact officers. I think after 3k decks u can let ship bots do the rest.

Rank 203

1087 Decks
2250 Cargo
518 Engineers
39 Tactical Officers
241 Helmsmen
603 Scientists

I'm investing into decks at the moment, i just stopped mass recruiting engineers. I want tactical officers too... and more engineers...

Thanks everybody for your thoughts.

My plan for now will be to continue to use rank up points on decks and put prisoners into crew untill I have higher AP and around 2500 decks then switch to rank up points into crew and use my AP to build up the rest of my decks. Would it be advisable to avoid Flamehawks for as long as I can or are they not as bad as I have heard?

avoid em for as long as you can. apparently theyre harder than tyrants, and those take 12-14 hits to kill from me... so im taking forever to rank to 350 now.