If you would, please give me some feedback on my current stats. My goal is to have fun and I enjoy PvP, NPCing and doing missions so I'm not really looking to focus intently on just one part of the game. Anyway, please let me know what you think and if I have any glaring, totally stupid and debilitating weaknesses. I'd like to get my Tactical Officers to 100, otherwise I'm not planning on adding any more crew. I'm trying to take my time in ranking, not to slow rank so much as just keep a good pacing going with tech and enjoy time with the game.

Rank 56

Size Class: Heavy Frigate

172 Decks
210 Cargo
200 Engineers
73 Tactical Officers
21 Helmsmen
44 Scientists

Special Modules attained: (not necessarily equipped at all times.)
up to Thrust Stabilizer for completed mission rewards
Protean Armory x2
CipherBot x2
Decryption Quad-Frame x2
Stryll Transponder x2

Resources per Hour:
Science: 611
Minerals: 353
Artifacts: 202

Completed Research Fields:

Graviton Shearing
Wave Conduits
Lattice Fields
Wideband Jamming
Titanium Improvements
Spacial Thrusters
Subspace Sensors
Deep Extraction
AI Logistics (only 1 of 3)

I'm not a high rank, but I would recommend removing the QuadFrames as they're generally seen as crap.

Also, what rank are you?

Edit: And get that hull up. Defense is good, but it's not worth much if you have low hull. Eventually you start getting 505 hull for 30 spaces (where my current level of research is, but it's really expensive, particularly for my low rank hahaha).

If you can grab a third Protean too that would be golden.

Sheesh, can't believe I forgot my rank. I've edited it in. It is 56.

If you haven't started, I would recommend more decks.

Also, DEFINITELY get that hull up. After reviewing the scan requirements for T.O. Carriers, Decaquads could possibly be the most space efficient option to get the minimal scan to find them.

From what I've seen, keeping Attack:Defense ratio is supposed to be best at 1:1, although 2:1 should work as well. However, you can have a high defense, but if you have no hull you're going to die.

At rank <30, I can say that if you just brick up your ship people will choose softer targets (may be subject to change upon higher ranks).

Nope, still true nearing 600 lol...

@ OP--
If you don't mind getting disabled from time to time, forego the defense at low ranks (they take up A LOT of space) and focus on Attack, Hull and Energy. Keep your scan around 50 so you can find the juicy planet boost dropping NPCs. Strategically, if someone disables you for a badge, hit them back for one of your own. Especially if they are higher rank than you. Eventually they will skip over you mainly because too many low rank people concern themselves with combat rep. If they know they are going to get disabled back, they won't bother with you.

I would recommend more decks and you can never have enough hull. I had Overcharged Q-Phased at level 54 and it worked great! I don't totally agree with removing decryp's because the higher scan you have, the easier your targets are in the battle tab.