After this past Deep Emergence mission I realized I am lacking in my NPC fighting. What should I do to increase my NPC fighting abilities.

The Surge Plexus modules from the battle market will also help alot. They provide 5% npc attack boost
each in addition to 50 energy. Limit 3 on your ship.
Also, after lots of npc-ing you will start getting shock pulse chargers. They will add another 20% to npc attack
Happy hunting !

If you are willing to sacrifice the buffs and have the ability to make your ship strong enough, you can also go for the Seeing Red medal, but it requires NO buffs on whatsoever.

For NPCs specifically, prioritize weapons and energy, then hull, then defenses. It may leave you with a glass cannon, but it is effective fr NPCing.

Thanks guys
is lvl. 92 too late to start up a small ship build?

depends on how many decks you have at that point. i had over 300, so i aimed for a middle ship build, swapping modules in and out. now just under 400 decks, but don't see adding too many more until i get another few hundred ranks.

That is still a SSB, not a MSB.

hmm, my damage cap for 399 decks is just shy of 200. if i was a 'true' ssb at rank 156, my damage cap would only be 78.

i would have to rank up to 380 (more than double) in order to reach the true ssb build for my current deck level.

what am i missing ? do folks count, as a ssb, any ship with constant forced module swapping for different activities ?

SSB does not mean exactly minimizing your damage cap, it merely means having a small ship. Based on the range of ships I view in my range, I would classify anything below 600-700 decks as a SSB, 701-1300/1400 as a MSB, 1401+ as a normal/large build.

Of course, those would differ immensely at higher ranks, with SSBs, MSBs (which Golgotha is classed at, likely around the lower-mid ranges, with 2000 decks), and NSBs all having many more decks.