I offer up this simple suggestion and welcome your feed back. With the rise of power of the small ship builds, some might be questioning (regretting) the number of decks on their ship. While I am opposed to outright redistribution of rank points, what if there was a middle ground? What if your ship bots could either add or SUBTRACT ship decks?

The description says this: Ship-Bot, Adds 2 decks to your ship when used.

From a role play stand point, I never imagined the bots "transforming" into decks; did you? I usually thought of some hardworking disposable bots who labored in the darkness and coldness of space to construct my decks for my crew. When they were done, they became space garbage. Well, what if those same bots were used to deconstruct ship decks?
You still have to acquire them. You still have to use them up. But to me, this maintains a fair balance, because it keeps choice and control in the hands of the player. Right now, if a small ship build decided to get larger, it would add the necessary rank points/ bots. Perhaps we could allow the large ship player to reduce decks using those same bots?
It becomes your choice to go either way.

What say ye?

I sense someone is gonna get pummeled with "oh my god another one" comments.

I'll save you the trouble, there are gonna be a lot of people who are gonna get on your case, cause this idea has been brought up at least 5 or 6 times, and every single time it has been shot down.

Well, I thank you. I consider myself a frequent forum visitor, and I use the search engine.
However, I completely missed that this has been suggested. My bad everyone.


edit: Here is the link to your topic too. It is more clearly discussed there. Wow, again my bad everyone. I was lazy on this one and failed to do the search.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=28925&hilit=+ship+bots

So ... if you have a lot of ship bots, and you want them to take deck space away ...
the way I see it is this ...

It would turn into a negative deck situation, or at least, an invisible ship, so to
say ... like Wonder Woman's plane ... zero deck space with modules held
together by chewing gum and bailing wire.

Actually, that is kinda fun to imagine! But no, I would figure the game would be coded so that you can't remove decks below mods equipped just like you can't add mods without the appropriate number of decks.

Though I must admit, now that I searched and read the other topics, I do think this would spark an immediate race down to 2k decks by many higher ranks; not all, but many of the pvp ships would. I know I would. Still, I am more inclined to side with player choice than with other game adjustments. If players could go up or down (perhaps with an added penalty to go down), I would be in favor of it.

if this was available, i would consider using it to boost my ship up in decks for scan runs, and then buck it back down after i was done.

how many decks could mento get rid of, if the ship-bot removal was at 20 bots per deck removed ?

I would jump down to a SSB again

ALL of his decks...
giving him a tiny rubber boat that houses 100K tacs and helmsman , with 10 meters thick diamond plating