I was hoping one of the well known SSB ships would be able to write an "owners manual" for the proper building of a SSB. I already know the definition (SSB = rank + 19 for decks) but I was thinking more along the lines of from rank 1, what planets do you colonize, what research mods do you get, where do all rank points go, etc. It would also be helpful to know what "goals" should be accomplished by what ranks (i.e. full set of Dom 3s by rank 100).

Also, this guide will not include anything that costs GP to use by anyone. (i.e. no having other players "hold" planets for you)

Research hull, take artifact planets. Ranks to engineers and tactical officers (ratio depends on your preference I would think). EVERYONE (imo) should have a full set of DOM 3s by rank 100.

For SSBs, mining isn't really an issue because your upkeep is really never significant. Research isn't extremely important because you really only need to research hull and planet structures, then scan later on.

Artifact gets you more crew, which is what makes the difference between a good SSB and a bad one. SSB with poor crew is awful.

i appreciate your input, but for this topic, I believe it is too general.

"Research hull To what tier before attempting to rank?, take artifact planets Size/production minimum. Ranks to engineers and tactical officers (ratio depends on your preference examples of preference would be nice I would think). EVERYONE (imo) should have a full set of DOM 3s by rank 100.

For SSBs, mining isn't really an issue because your upkeep is really never significant. Research isn't extremely important because you really only need to research hull and planet structuresTo what tier before attempting to rank?, then scan later on."

At what ranks should I have my first dom cannon, first protean, etc. installed and which gets priority (i.e. I may have 180 yellow badges and 160 red badges by rank 20 but I'd only have 39 decks at that point and obviously cant install all the protean and dom cannons)

the only reason to aim for an ssb build is to harvest arti ... yes, you want to be stronger than other ships at your rank, but that comes from arti production - having a damage cap is just a bonus that gets bigger the higher the rank, but is not hugely significant at ranks below 75-ish as folks with more decks can stack on more guns than you can defend effectively against.

you will not be able to defend any of your planets at such a low rank as rank 20, so there is no point distinguishing between planets. you get your mission exotic unlocked at rank 25 and your mission dyson at rank 50. both planets are invulnerable so you can use those as your artifact production base. of course, this requires GP expenditure (unless you are willing to wait 3+ years).

if you have the assistance of an artifact or research legion, you can focus on the other resource production when selecting planets. you do not want the best planets because those will just be stolen from you as soon as a higher-ranked player scans them.

my point is that you will not succeed if you start and stay as an ssb - you have to aim to become an ssb at a particular rank and then plan to get yourself there. i currently have 402 decks, so will become an ssb at around rank 383, when i will have all of the battle martket artis, lots of brackets and xcharges from my artifact production, and hopefully will have taltherian completed to boost my arti production further. all the stuff i do until then is just aiming to get me to that point (months down the road).

I am not a strict SSB (220 decks at rank 153), but I started building toward it around rank 50, after going through a bunch of threads here and listening to the advice of a legionmate. I also started off as a Vygoid builder, which is far from ideal for an SSB. Konqul fixer is what you should choose if you want to start off SSB without good planets being held for you.
With that out of the way...

Hulls should be your main focus for however many ranks it takes until you get to deep core neutronium. If you are in a research legion, you'll get get there faster; otherwise, it'll take a while. I've had deep core neutroniums since rank 60 and they have served me very well. I don't plan on getting fermionics until I rank up enough to have the deck space for them.

Also - it's ok to research defenses! I actually had defense modules on until around rank 80 (decks 200, defense around 700, hull around 3000 at that time), as higher defense combined with my damage cap made it hard for people around my level to disable my ship. Eventually, as you rank up, your damage cap will become your defense since you become visible to more and more higher-ranked ships with more guns (i.e. your defense modules are no longer able to keep up with their guns). I switched to pure hull with no defensive modules installed around rank 100 and had around 5500 hull with 300 defense at that time.

For planet structures, do as much as you can. I'm currently at the mining level of +12's (star lifting, I think?), but I sat on +8's for a while - a good 40 ranks or so, if I remember correctly, since I couldn't afford +10's.

Do not neglect energy research. You'll want relays to increase your energy charge rate, or you'll be spending most of your time on GL either watching your energy recharge or... I don't know what else you could do, actually. X-conduits, minimum.

Artifact production should be minimum 20x your rank. More than that is better.

I can't really answer your first dom/protean/stuff questions for SSBs since I didn't start off as one; I did, however, have my 2 dom I's and 3 proteans before rank 50, if I remember correctly. As for the limited deck space, install your weapons when you're online, and install your hull when you're off. A lot of being SSB is about switching in and out your mods all the time.

EDIT: Just saw Senatorhung's post, and I definitely agree. I don't think it's a good idea to use an SSB from rank 1, because without insanely high artifact production, you're actually more vulnerable than a full-deck build.

Are you starting from scratch or are you established and planning to reset, that can matter a bunch.

Also, toxics are easy for high levels to make. See if you can trade for something. I'd give you two maxed out toxics for 1 decent to ok artie planet.

I agree with that to a certain extent; however, hull modules can be very expensive to repair for the sub-100 ships. For that reason, the few mining planets that I mistakenly took earlier (my first 3, actually) came in handy.

I still wouldn't recommend taking mining planets, though. Boosting your artifact production and selling those artifacts on the GTC or forums can help a lot with upkeep and maintenance.

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions. It's always good to hear how others would do it. I'm thinking the strategy to take for the first rank would be the following:
#1. Find a pure research legion (preferably lvl 5 or higher).
#2. Colonize an Avg or L rich arti planet (not likely to be worth an enemy invading)
#3. Apply all research points into hull until deep core neutronium and transconduit.
#4. Switch to a pure arti legion (preferably lvl 5 or higher)
#5. Apply all prisoners to T.O. until 50 attack any remaining prisoner points go to engineers
#6. Mission to rank 2.
Minimum Time of Completion: ? days (assumes research legion provides 18.5k daily research and arti pulls from the one planet produce enough prisoners to reach 50 attack from TOs)

good luck hanging out as a rank1 for 6 months. i think PaulHsiao held out for about 20 days ??

It will take 907,000 research points to finish deep core neutronium, which, assuming you are in a pure research legion that pumps out 25,000 per day (I think that's what most 5's are advertising?), will take you a little over a month to do. It's a long wait, not to mention the potential artifacts you would be missing out on from not having the planets to boost hull and tactical officers. In addition, unless you buy storage, a rank 1 ship caps arti production way before 4000 AP, so without GP or a lot of CTP, you will never see a prisoner.

I think that means s/he's planning to start from scratch...

Maybe, maybe not. If his answer is yes, and depending on the level, may give him a significant advantage...

@People below rank 75 having too many guns to defend against. Wrong. thanks to an art base giving regular Android Helmsmen and Below 50 decks, still do more damge then anyone my BT. I have yet to see anyone who takes me in every single battle. Only flaw in the plan is not having enough energy to punch through high hull, which everyone seems to be running.

If I did it, it would be from complete scratch. No GP, no saved planets, nothing more than the legion I find to camp out in

Since you won't directly answer my question, I will ask a more specific one. What level are you now?

Contrary to what people say, it's totally possible to go ssb from the word go even if you don't have cool planets to start with.

It will really help if you start off at a primarily research base giving out 20-25k research and 10-15k arti per person per day pay out. (they would ideally have 44+ members). You'd research hulls to at least hardened durtanium plating to start with. Shouldn't be hard if you're at a research base.

1st thing to note is by SSB I'm taking you mean SSSB (smallest small ship build). So you already know what you're aiming for (your decks = rank + 19). Now that's your constraint, and everything will have to fit that space.

Now let's look at your damage cap. your damage cap = (rank + 19)/2 (taking that you're going for SSSB). Ideally, I'd aim for (hulls+shield)/Max damage cap = 40+. If you can get that done, you're OK with Hull size.

Now Konqul Fixer would be the ideal race / prof. combination no doubt.

You will do the following research threads only (early on): weapons, armor, planetary buildings. You'd preferably have lvl 5 planetary buildings by rank 20, I had by rank 10-12.

You'll preferably need a little help with traps from your legion members (omicron and krionus).

I'd suggest you don't go for reds/disables in the beginning at all. Hacking and raiding will be the way to go. Get your decryption quad-frame asap, and the proteans one by one. I had my 1st decryption quad and protean by week 1, 2nd protean by week 2, and enough yellows for 3rd protean by wk 3. So it's doable. Probably didn't start disabling before having by 1st protean. This was all by rank 12/13.

What will help is having a trinity-core drive (GP item) for defense early on. Don't prefer researched def at the lower ranks at all myself (very likely won't prefer later on either, but let's see). Poor space to def ratio.

It goes without saying, some GP items will help ease the game play experience.

Most people suggest no cloak for SSBs. But I prefer having the decryption quad always.

You'll need to juggle devices on and off depending on an attack mode, etc.

As for crew member allocation, I'll suggest ALL rank points to be put to TO early on. Maybe add upto 10 rank points to engineers a little after rank 10, have 90 then 100 energy as you see fit later (subjective). But the TOs will make for the bulk of your attack.

So you freeze rank around 7-10 (11 even) for your blues and yellows. (and I did that without researching any cloak items, yes, until I got my 1st decryption quad). Then you go for reds. You get 1/2 doms early on if possible. When you attack, you may opt to lower the decryption quad and some hull to make room for a weapon if necessary. You put on only one weapon which takes all the rest of the deck space available, if you know what I mean. Use buffs if you feel necessary (crimson obleisks). I realized, I didn't really need any weapons for the most part, - was still hitting other ships for near max for their damage cap with TOs only.

Your decks will come exclusively from sip-bots every two levels.

In order to progress, you'll definitely be strongly dependent on arti production/shipment from base for rescued prisoners, android helmsman, for the least.

Many threads on the forum, I found very helpful, especially the following:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=27000&hilit=+bob
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=29506

You'll better check with others to find ideal attack to have at various levels. Then you can freeze rank to get around to those attacks.

Another thing I found helpful was an excel sheet by Thunderbolta here:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=30522&hilit=excel

You can input your hull + shield size, attack, defense, etc and that of an opponent player you'd meet (hypothetical) and check to see how your ship does against them on the sheet. Can help a lot with effective ship building.

SSB will be challenging, sometimes very frustrating but it promises a lot of fun too. Wish you good luck.

I think it equally important to think about just why you would want a SSB. The design limits gameplay in so many ways as you rank, and is worthless at rank. Better to be real sure that is what you want before you commit the time and energy into it.

Anomaly has a level 6 research base that also gives 10kish arti per day, this could be the ideal base to head into if someone is looking to reset and go ssb. if it were me resetting i would stay in a research base until i had deep core neutronium finished, 3rd or 4th tier relays done, 4th-ish tier scanners, and +6 or +8 structures all finished, and if you're really keen i guess you could go for ct-lab early on as well.

Did not catch this. About 2+ months actually, though it was not a good experience, mainly since I wasn't really even able to come on every day to dump resources. Cannot complain however, did give me a medium-sized head start.

I never went with SSB, however. Went with the more colossal build, works great. After the reset, I have nearly double the attack and defense, 2.5x research production and 2x artifact production, and a healthy stream of income from AP and minerals.

As for tips, if you are still looking for some. Although an AP base is unarguably the best, don't hesitate to jump at RP. RP can define power early on.