Hello Everyone!
I reset my ship for the first time in my three years of playing just a few days ago. I had reached around rank 440ish and was not very proud of my ship. This time around, I would like to have a SSB (Small Ship Build) and play tactically through the game as I now know how to play fairly well. I realize this requires a good bit of patience, as well as discipline. For the next month or so I plan on staying in my legion for artifact output (approximately 70k/day and a bit of research) to boost my stats before I actually start ranking. I believe afterwards it would be a wise decision to move to our training legion for a research boost and freeze there for a bit before coming back to an artifact base. I welcome advice for maintaining a SSB (i.e; what special mods should I shoot for first, what standard mods take priority? How should my stats look as I move from rank to rank? Does artifact output count above all else when making a SSB?, etc.)



Notes:
1.) I hope to keep a perfect SSB, which in my mind means to never have a deck size larger than twice that of my rank+19 Thoughts?
2.) I hope to never use rank points on decks. Thus far, and in the future I wish to only use ship bots/special arties. Thoughts?
3.) I hope to always have 20x my rank in engineers. Thoughts?
4.) I am thinking that I might shoot for 50 tacts and helmsman per rank before ranking. Do you believe this is viable? Would this be a good amount to achieve per rank? If not, should I highten this or lower this?
5.) For at least the first 50 ranks I am hoping to have 70 hull and shield+ per rank. Do you believe this is viable? Would this be too adventurous of my expectations? Should I lower/increase this amount?
6.) Is going to a research base (i.e; losing loyalty here and the arty output) worth it for a SSB who will be slow ranking?

Lastly, assuming this is the right board to post this one, I plan to update this thread as I progress and would love to hear all of your suggestions as I do so.
Looking forward to all of your thoughts/comments/suggestions. Also, on a last thought, I have already made the decision to go SSB. I would appreciate it if no one would try to convince me to not go this route, as I believe I have researched the topic thoroughly and have made an informed decision based on my specific taste.

Thank You!
-Blade

IMO this is a stupid idea as you will never be a strong ship, you may be strong for your rank and if you're happy with that then go for it.

Personally i don't even see the point in why a legion would keep you for 3 months + if you don't intend on doing anything and in terms of building a ship base payouts are a sucky way to go about it, just as a tidbit if you spend 3 months collecting it will equal 6.3million ap or about 60 of each artifact (brackets cells prisoners etc) in the same time you do this I will collect 332 million ap


It really depends on what you want out of this game but in terms of building a strong ship this is not the way i'd go about it.

Thought i'd answer your notes as i am desperately trying to avoid work atm.

1.) I hope to keep a perfect SSB, which in my mind means to never have a deck size larger than twice that of my rank+19 Thoughts?

This can be done but it is not easy and will severely limit your ability to grow as a ship you need over 1800 decks just to fit scan modules on i wouldn't aim for anything lower than this if you want to be able to scan effectively which will be a major source of ap gain.

2.) I hope to never use rank points on decks. Thus far, and in the future I wish to only use ship bots/special arties. Thoughts?

Again this can be tricky but it is worthwhile when you get to higher ranks you will regret using any rank points towards decks when you have Ship-Bot (Uses Left: 9888) sitting in your cargo.

3.) I hope to always have 20x my rank in engineers. Thoughts?

This would be a nice goal but i don't think it really needed until you get to a good point with your tachs i would say 15.1 is a more realistic target to aim for and while it doesn't offer the same flexibility as 20.1 i presume your ship is going to built from a mostly slow ranking playstyle which a 20.1 won't really lend you without wasted energy.

4.) I am thinking that I might shoot for 50 tacts and helmsman per rank before ranking. Do you believe this is viable? Would this be a good amount to achieve per rank? If not, should I highten this or lower this?

This would require some serious slow ranking and a substantial ap/h at higher ranks this will be easy but collecting 8 prisoners at 70k a day the 3 months supply of prisoners will cover 8 ranks of tachs and that's without provisions for adding energy.

5.) For at least the first 50 ranks I am hoping to have 70 hull and shield+ per rank. Do you believe this is viable? Would this be too adventurous of my expectations? Should I lower/increase this amount?

Same As the last post 7 brackets and cells is going to take about 700k ap which is 29k/h if you rank once a day 14.5k if you rank every other day.
6.) Is going to a research base (i.e; losing loyalty here and the arty output) worth it for a SSB who will be slow ranking?

Cost of a maxed plasma 1.5-2k ctp. Cost of maxed ap planet GL getting one for under 20k, Buy 3-5 Maxed plasma's and they will equal 70k research a day depending on your access to decent artifacts.

Agree so much with Fireblade on so much he says, especially regarding "research" legions.
Research is easy to get, Arti less so.

TBH I think freeze ranking at low ranks is just about the worst thing anyone could do but if it makes you happy... meh

Based on what you want to do, not discussing if I agree or not.

1) Tap bases so you are always getting silver badges. You will need them in the long run and even one is better than zero and if you are on 5+ bases, there is always a chance for a crate.

2) Get all your badges as soon as possible, it is a lot easier to get badges before people get the AP to have krios/halcs all the time. (Remember, hacking will not give you experience).

3) There are a LOT of people working on their 3 year ally. Get them to max toxics for you at a cheap price (sometimes as low as invasion costs). When you take them back, work on the Lone Conqueror medal.

4) Do the Deep Meditation medal while you are freeze ranking (but after you get some planets). The earlier you get it done, the happier you will be in the long run.

Well I'm an SSB and take almost 300 hits to kill so IMO I think I'ts totally worth it. Now you can however be a strong ship, as I can get my attack close to 8k now and I am rank 223.

Great response, Fireblade.

When I see an experienced player "reset and go SSB" (which is, apparently, 1/2 of the player base right now), I always wonder if they remember just how slow everything is at the beginning of the game. Your recharge rate is slooooooow, and even if your AP is astronomical for your rank, your ship growth is gonna be sloooooow. The amount of energy you have to put into annoying missions you thought you'd never have to see again is going to get in the way of soooooo many things you wanna do.

There are very, very few ships out there that are so bad/weak that a reset is a better option than finding a friendly legion willing to advise, help, and share some decent Terras to get the ball rolling on your AP improvement. You'll gain strength so much faster (though admittedly, you may never be a "beast" for your rank), and won't have to wait through all that tedious low-rank stuff again.

That being said, there's nothing you can do now, so ODragon's advise is very solid. Follow it!

A general suggestion on this topic is if you plan to be a leech (which, really you are) to the legion, give back by being Aerlen Fixer.

1. For lower ranks, I believe is best for hacking and raiding people.

Explanation: People at lower ranks usually consist of people who just play just to get points for other legions, so most of them will not have quantum firewall traps set up. It's alright to start out with some cloak and then hack people until you get cipher bots. Many people at lower ranks who do have scan power do not have much defense or attack.

Explanation 2: Raiding people could be easier because people get killed more often at these ranks. The way I would raid people is to keep multiple tabs on your browser open of people you see is easy to kill. These guys who start off weak usually get killed after a while by other people when you refresh the tabs. Getting more raids will allow you to get protean armories early on, so you will not have to put on too many hull mods if you get them soon.

2. Rank 10 is probably a pretty rank to stick around while you increase your crew and research very powerful hull mods.

Explanation: People around these ranks start to get a lot weaker in there ships in this rank range. Many people around these ranks often start putting on random things on points because they do not know how to play the game. Respectively, having hull mods researched very well is helpful too because it'll make you a very bulky SSB for a while until higher ranks. However, hull mods eventually become overshadowed by durtanium brackets, so just keep the hull mods on temporarily until you get enough natural hull from them.

3. Getting your artifact production 50x your rank for more tactical officers from rescued prisoners.

Explanation: Tactical officers at your rank are more important than getting engineers because you are going to slow rank anyway. It's best to have more tactical officers so you can deal more damage to bigger ships with less defense. Engineers can come in later when you need them for missions if you want to become a taltherian excavator.

4. Doing easy missions is fine if you want to get your omicron injector, harmonic resonator and Ai supercomputer.

Explanation: Easy missions are very good because they give less exp for completions. These tiered mods can help you get started in the beginning with decent stats to start you off on the right track.

Thank you all for the quick replies. You have all given me great information/advice. However, there is one question that still lingers in my mind. What do I do about missions? I dislike missions very much, I prefer PVP/NPC over them any day. However, they are important. Other than the easy ones for tier rewards, what missions do you all believe are "worth it"?
Thank You!
-Blade

Note: For those that wish to point out my "leeching" and not contributing to the legion, I would just like to say that I have been completely loyal to this legion (or leading it's sub legions) for the majority of my 3+years in the game. I spoke to senior leaders and expressed my concern for my lack of contribution BEFORE resetting and would never wish to impede it's growth. I do what I do with full support from my fellow legion members/leadership.

Don't worry about the missions what so ever! Until you get about rank 200+ just to get your melters, seeds and what not.

Don't worry *too* much about missions early on, but I would suggest putting some energy towards the ones that give you awesome planet artis or improvements.

You know the ones: spires, hoveroids, ergos etc and later Trellith and Litheor.
As you already know, ship strength is really not defined by research but by the quality of your planets, so anything that helps you maximize production on your maxed planets is gold.

My tips
1. Build your decks up to at least 200, idealicly 480 or so, then grow into rank+19
Reason, if you have 20 decks your scan will be horrible, you will therefor find less good planets and have bad production, resulting in less prisoners, cells, brackets and Purgers. Which then hinders your ability to do more scan runs.
If you have 480 decks you can fit 5 continuum anayslers onto your ship. this gives you a decent scan so you get more planets and therefore more decent planets resulting in better production and so better ship growth. Your gonna reach rank 461 in a while, why hurt your ship growth?

2 Dont use rank points on decks if your going pure ssb from the off. If your going 480 decks then use some at a low rank so you can get decent scan in the mean time.

3-5 Dont worry about ratios at low ranks. And especialy dont put all your rank points in engineers. Put a decent amount into tactical officers so you have higher attack and can take tougher defended planets and hit harder on npcs, players and bases. Freezing at a realy low rank for days per rank is a horrific idea. if every day you get 100k ap at rank 100 then your grow by about 10 hull per day. If every day you get 400k ap at rank 400 then every day you gain 40 hull. So 4 days at rank 100 is equivelent to 1 day at rank 400. Freezing pays off more the higher productions you get. Dont even consider freezing before rank 400 is my opinion

6 Go to a research base for a couple of weeks focusing on scanning and production buildings. Once they are at a decent level go back to a arti base

Get to level 50, starting Xecti chain as soon as available.
Purchase Exotic, Dyson, get three x22 planets from legionmates, then rift all three.
Finish Xecti chain, go Xecti governor.

Have nothing but invincible planets. Freeze rank with huge artifact income for your rank, constantly hacking and raiding already dead players.

Pay back legionmates for 22x planets by sharing arcrift entities every day.

Sell Arcrift entities for mad CTP. Spend CTP on purchasing future planets when bored of selling Arcrifts.

Note: Do not ever do this. Its horrible horrible advice. It would probably ruin your ship. Do not even consider it. That being said, it would be REALLY funny if it worked.

I did not know that resetting kept you on people's logs.. a rank 300 something got me just a few minutes after I reset. (Bet they felt big and bad killing a rank 1)
I chose not to reset again because you have to wait a month to do so and that seemed foolish to me as I am going to get disabled sooner or later, even though no one has disabled me since.

I would like to thank everyone for their opinion/comments/advice thus far, you have all been a huge help! I have decided to rank a bit (at rank 13 atm, gonna slow down now that I have some decent planets [approximately 300 arty/h, pretty sure that is good for 13]). I have also chosen to remain at the arty base, and I currently switch between planetary structures and hull atm for research. I hack in my off time, and currently have my first cipherbot. Also, I am about 1/3 of the way to an armory. I will post an actual image when my stats are actually somewhat impressive. Until then, I would not mind more feedback!

Thank You!
-Blade