Hullo all (my first post here!)

I really enjoy this game galaxy legion. It reminds me of Stellar Crisis, an old text based multiplayer game that I played when I was a kid. I'd like to go into this with all my eyes open (after a trial period of a few days that I fooled around with it and then reset).

From what I'm reading, maxing out your decks means you can get the highest possible attack (ie., maxed decks mean you can fit all the biggest and scariest weapons). This mean that if you've got someone split between decks and engineers, vs. someone the same level who has all decks, the all decks guy is probably going to win (if they are also both equally researched).

Now, I've been reading about this 'small deck' approach where you hit like 150 decks and then go all out with crew. What I'm wondering is, will this approach mean that you have the highest defense possible? if you have a small deck ship with lots of helmsman and tactical officers, would it be correct to say that such a ship would have a considerably higher defense than another max deck ship or a 1/2 deck 1/2 engineer setup?

If a level 300 guy with the maximum deck size, heavy guns and such went up against a level 300 small deck ship (who spent their research in defense instead of weapons), who would win? The small deck ship ofc would have lots of tactical officers and so would be able to deal out 'some' damage, while hopefully dodging and defending against the majority of the max deck ships' heavy guns... but would it be enough?

To boil this down to one question, which of these approaches is most viable:
1. 4 decks then one cargo or one engineer alternating (switching that to all decks after ~level 50-75
2. 3 decks 2 engineers til I have ~130-150 decks then 2 tac 2 helms one cargo or one scientist alternating

Thanks for any thoughts!

I would say never take cargo or scientist for they are a waist of rank points. The thing with decks is while yes you would be able to get more models on at the same time you take more damage in an attack. The smaller your deck size the less damage you take in an attack. So its up to you which way you want to go. Energy helps a lot at small ranks and so do tac officers. But if you would rather get the biggest scayest things on your ship then go with more decks. If you don't care and want to look small but still pack a huge hit than go with few deck and lots of tac. officers. Its all up to you and how you want to play.

When I was low level, I did 4 deck/1 cargo, now it is all cargo. I am thinking about going to energy soon because it will mean less time between leveling up. It all depends on what you want to do. After a certain point, cargo space is essentially free (tess containers/mass storage pods) as well as scientist and helmsmen (androids, all from artifact shipments).

In the end, you will probably never have enough deck space so unless you are worried about taking more damage, that's always the right place to put your rank points.

I spend everything on decks right now so I can install defenses, weapons, etc. and I just rely on artifacts to give me crew. It seems crew is only really good for raiding, because modules will give you much higher bonuses when you reach higher levels.

I'm rank 207 and put 4 points into deck and 1 into engineers. I figure that, although reactors yield more energy per deck (engineers will give 2 energy per rank point, but 1 rank point in your deck will let you put reactors that give more than 2 energy/deck and thus more than 2 energy/rank point) I've got plenty of room for all the reactors so it's not a question of efficiency, it's just a good bonus for energy when I level (an extra 730 right now), but I don't do much PvP so if you plan to then you might want to do something different.

The damage cap is dictated by the amount of decks you have on your ship. Few decks = smaller ship = gets hit less often. So instead of buying decks and equipping mods, you'll be buying crewmen. However, some things can only come from mods, cloak, scan, hull, and shields cannot be increased by crew. Defense you don't have to worry about because your ship size is whats limiting the damage your taking. Cloak and Scanners are some of the largets mods you can stick on your ship, so those are out. Mabye room for one big scanner so you can find NPC's with cloak but that's it. This leaves hull shields weapons and energy.

Naturally you'll want hull maxed out. You'll probably want energy as that's always a good thing to have and they arn't too big, at least eventually you'll want relays and luckily those will always only take 5 decks each for a max of 20 decks irreguardless of what level relays you have. Shields are realy iffy. Sheilds take up more room than hull. The question is wether or not the damage they absorb in hitpoints will be greater than the amount of increased damage you will take from having the decks to equip them. Personally I would still pack as many guns as you can. Even though you'll want to be getting stats with crew, the "small" ship build is all about min/maxing damage out versus damage in, and more attack always helps to max your damage. Realy it comes down to what the increase in damage is for the decks that it takes for a certian mod, versus the benefit that mod provides. The only real way to figure this out is to break down numbers of damage/deck and then the increased damage received for the decks vs the benefit the mod provides. Aka: is the damage increase from having 35 extra decks for a heavy quantum devastator less than the +168 damage it does.

Shield and hull can come from artifacts without using decks. That only leaves cloak and scan. If you are in a legion that will share small/rich artifact planets with you then you don't need to worry about scanning for planets or having your planets taken by most players.

If I was going to reset and do a small decks strategy then I would put all my research into energy. Put just enough decks to add the the energy mods and some of the ncp drops you get. I would put the rest of the rank points into tactical officers. Since the small deck size caps the damage done by your opponent you don't need to worry about helmsman.

Since you will not have enough space to install most of the mods you will not need to invest much in research. You will also not need much mineral production because you upkeep will be very low. Artifact production will very important because it gives you buildings, hull, shields, cargo, helmsmen and scientist.

You will not have scanners to find planets on your own so you will need to join a legion that shares. You will not have the building tech to make good use a large planet so a small planets that can fit all artifact building are the ones you want.