DeckEngineerBalance
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Ship Tips/Discussion: Planning the Build
Simplification
(1) Always get enough decks to fit attack, hull, and energy (max # of highest tech mods). (2) If you have enough decks for (1), get engineers. If you can already autorank add tac officers. (3) Don't add decks specifically for defense, it's counter productive. Keep the ship build smaller. (4) Get decks only for high efficiency modules other than (1), of at least the same stat per deck as a tech mod 75% down the relevant Research Tree branch. (5) Become Drannik Fixer as soon as possible and NPC farm for higher XP. (6) If you find you charged enough (say overnight) to rank off missions, plan ahead and do critical chains that give you GOOD modules (hint: most of the mission rewards are not that efficient - especially 2 stat ones like defense+cloak).
Maximum Efficiency of Decks (NPC)
In a limited deck situation you want attack, then hull, then energy (but you can swap some secondary energy mods out after using part of your bar).
Attack is #1 because your npc xp ratio (efficiency) is based off your kill bonus vs. the energy used, which is based off the number of shots, which is based off your attack stat. The minimum npc xp ratio is 2.1 , which is derived from the fact that 5 energy/shot yields 8-13 xp, uniform random distribution. Thus the average is simply ((8+13)/2) / 5(en/shot) = 2.1. Your actual npc ratio depends on the mix of NPC you face (mainly from rank). For example a Sha'din Charger yields 30 xp on kill; if you take 6 shots to kill it, you get an additional 30 / (6 * 5 en/shot) = 1.0. Add this to the base xp for just shooting, and the overall xp ratio is 2.1 + 1.0 = 3.1 . At high ranks, it is possible to 2 or even 1 shot this NPC. If you consistently 2 shot it, the xp ratio for this NPC is 5.1. For the most part, if you take 10 shots average to kill something and you double your attack, you will take 5 shots average - this will double the kill bonus ratio part, and cut the damage you take in half for killing that NPC. So, attack also helps reduce damage. Note: if its a small number of shots to start, you may not "cut this in half" by doubling attack since the function for damage and # of shots to kill is non-linear, but for nasty NPCs which take a lot of shots/energy like the Assassin, this is true and almost always worth it.
Your aggregate xp ratio (particularly above rank 400-500) will mainly be affected by your ability to kill matched enemies Charger, Dark Runner, Tech Collector, Assassin, and fixed rank Flamehawk. The minimum number of shots it can take to kill an NPC is a constant for fixed rank NPC, for example for Flamehawk it is 7. Simply: int((hull+shield)/(rank*2.5))+1 . This minimum is generally achieved consistently at 20-24k attack power for this enemy.
For matched enemies it is a bit more complicated because their hull+shield value changes with rank. Each matched NPC has a multipler where: total health = SQRT(Rank) * (hull + shield multiplers). The Charger health for example is (SQRT(Rank) * 80). Now, since damage cap per shot is Rank * 2.5, you can see that the minimum # of shots is int(SQRT(Rank) * 80 / (Rank * 2.5))+1 . At rank 100, this is int(800/250)+1 or 4 shots. It simply cannot be done in less than 4 shots. However, at rank 900 it is int(2400/2250)+1 or 2 shots.
If you don't change you ship's attack, then you will do similar nominal damage to an NPC even as it increases in rank. For example, a Charger has approx. Rank*3.5 for its defense multiplier. A Rank 200 has double the defense of a Rank 100 Charger - but it also has double the damage cap. Therefore, if you did 300 damage per shot before, you'd do about 300 damage per shot to it now. It would however take more shots to kill.
Due to the "Square root growth" of NPC health, you don't need 9x the attack at Rank 900 that you did at Rank 100, instead you need about 3x. Because this growth rate gets slower the higher the rank, and because most players are getting more AP/hr as they go higher (meaning faster stat growth from prisoners), NPC's become "relatively easier" to keep pace with over time. This is a major reason why autoranking is possible at higher ranks. The difficulty is a function of SQRT(rank)/rank which declines with rank. High attack is key to taking advantage of it which is why I recommend Drannik Fixer above all else.
Hull is #2 because you want to minimize the # of repairs you have to do while NPC farming. However, this affects credit cost and downtime but not energy efficiency, so it is secondary.
Energy is #3 because you want to get your max refill when ranking. After some is used modules can be taken off if cheap to repair, I recommend having always enough space for Generators due to their cost. You want enough decks to rotate in all energy when about to rank up, without taking off major modules. Otherwise, many energy modules are not needed while NPC farming.
"Defenseless" NPCing
At lower ranks, you are usually better off maxing hull and installing no defense, or only high efficiency npc drops like forcevoiders. As an example, a ship with 500 decks and 500 defense taking about 220 damage from an enemy with 3400 attack. Removing all defenses for more weapons/hull resulted in 150 defense and taking 250 damage (the damage cap for the ship at 500 decks). It came out to +40% attack, -70% defense, but only +15% damage taken. However, +40% attack means taking about 30% less hits to kill it, pretend it took 100 hits @ 220 damage to your ship, now it takes 70 hits @ 250 damage. You take about 20% LESS damage than before because you are able to dispatch with the ship quicker! Remember, the best defense is a good offense.
A smaller ship build can be your friend. By sticking to the higher stat per deck modules, you can significantly reduce damage taken. In the long run, it may not be worth allocating +800 decks to core tech defense modules (even more for secondary). As NPC attack continues to grow, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep up defense wise with helmsman. The example shows that tac officers are better for attack AND defense AND energy/xp efficiency, which overshadows putting any rank points into defense.
Build Example
Quick build example (not including any badge mods cause I assume just npc drops, but DOM cannons are always worth the space):
1) Ion Pulse Ballistae (10x4), Korteth Blaster (14x4), are the main NPC weapon drops that are really efficient. Composite Ray 13x4 (farming darks is expected), 40 + 56 + 52 = 148 decks. Max tech weapons 55x8 = 440 deck.
2) Korteth Plates (10x2), Scythe Plating (4x18 ), 43x5 max tech platings = 307 decks.
3a) 7x5 relays (inc. sith) = 35 decks. 3b) 45x3 reactors (although I normally stop at Intra-D) = 135.
4) Flex space for rank up energy modules (deck efficent ones) is 300-400 (to avoid taking off weapons or hull). Cloaking for mission unlock is max about 200, which is covered by this flex space when needed. Secondary cloak modules are pointless most of the time. Scanners need 500 max for core mods, an additional 200 covers the high efficiency secondary items (perhaps, +30% scan over core value).
So our flex space is either 500 or 700 depending on scan run aggression; since you can only go so high and purgers set the real limit on how many *new* planets you get, it's probably sufficient to settle for less total planets (but still a decent amount). 5000 scan can be reached with modest cost scan 'n' sell modules (about 700 scan each, not top tier), 6650 scan with the highest tech module and minimal secondary mods (no titan proxy, no real mission items, etc). Meaning: 500-600 decks.
1070 core NPC farming decks (attack + hull + energy). 500-600 flex decks (rank up energy mods OR cloak OR scan OR temporary inefficient combat mods). So you can get pretty good deck balance with 1800 decks or so. Now for the "deck/energy balance" part. A pure deck build (5/rank points) is going to get to this value around rank 350. Even with decent generator tech it will be 1000-1500 energy, so ranking will be "slow". Thus it is recommended to put in decks to fit your latest weapons + hull + generators, but not *every module*. If you are fitting your latest techs, then add engineers instead. This has the side effect that if your tech is growing slowly (low RP), you will put more in energy, which should increase ranks faster, which will get you more planet slots (for RP). One benefit to "add deck as you tech" is that any Ship-Bots you find will lower the requirements and get ultimately points shunted to engineers. After you max at 1800 or whatever, ship bots won't do any good, so it's best to throttle off for the last few 100 decks to make best use of them unless decks is an issue for you.
A ship with 1500-2000 decks and decent tech can do quite well in NPC farming - possibly even 4.0+ xp ratio (see first section). If after rank 350 you add pure engineers per the above:
rank 350 is 43% xp to next rank from a refill @ 4.0 npcing xp ratio. rank 600 is 67% xp to next rank from a refill @ 4.0 npcing xp ratio.
If you can maintain 4.0+ , add at least 10 engineers per rank (which we know we can), you will converge on autoranking (time between refills gets lower). If you add any prisoners as engineers you will converge faster. There are no significant volumes of XP available from missions at 4.0+, meaning NPCing is the best way to rank up in the long run.
Energy Build
I used to be a strong believer in the pure energy build, but my experience is that it becomes very difficult to do anything after awhile. Yes, you can unlock almost all missions with 700-800 decks and good tech, but you won't be able to fight NPCs effectively. As noted missions with high XP will only carry you so far, since the XP of almost all missions is comparable with the BASE XP rate of NPC farming (2.1) - the absolute minimum. It appears to be much easier to spec energy on a deck build, than the reverse, so I recommend as above, decks to fit all core tech modules.
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