Do you plan on getting tactical officers or engineers? I've started early and already made my choice and it tears me up to not explain why it is pretty much superior.

When do you get enough decks? I would assume you mean when you are getting enough deck artifacts to match your new mods from research or when you are doing a scout-like build. I think i would go with helmsman simply for the fact that defense mods take up more room than attack. But this is hypothetical since in reality I am very far away from having enough decks.

but i am curious to know which one is superior and why

I'd say engineers since it's the only un-buffable aspect from the obvious three choices. That being energy,attack and defense. Cargo and research are a big no-no as far as I am concerned. You can have "too much" attack and defense for what I usually do (NPC hunting) but you can't have too much energy. Here you go for an argumentation.

i would say 50/50 enigineers and tacical officers but we have a colossal galaxy destroyer biggest ship size possible and he is still ut of space

Tactical officers because you get helmsmen from artifact draws and because upgrading from heavy null rays is prohibitively expensive, while getting ~400 officers for the same attack increase costs you 0 credits, plus 0 credits per day.

Also, to answer the in-thread question, you have enough decks when you can fit everything you have researched, which is somewhere between 3k and 4k decks. You can even switch a little earlier than that, because ship bots and parts vaults will push you over the top. Those are also common enough to keep up with your research once you get there.

Ok so this is a more end game topic... sorry I will go sit back down at the kids table

ps spoonyjank, if that is a picture of Gaius Baltar, then that is awesome

You must not know that this is Baltar from the game then.

I'd say both but I would put more in one then the other. It all depends on your game play and which way you want to go. Strength or rank. But like sgtlynch said it is very hard to have enough space. Unless you mean just for where you are at with your research that you have extra space and or you can keep up with what your research uses with your artifact production. Which could be possible if it is high enough.

Well in terms of both PVP and NPC hunting, being able to attack more times is more valuable than your attacks being more powerful. Disabling a certain NPC in 1 less hit than normal usually takes a lot more attack power than you had before and its effects on the XP return are almost negligible. Most of the XP comes from the actual attacking and the efficiency, due to the disable bonus being more significant, only actually goes up a very small percentage with one less hit. Another way of looking at it is that 10 engineers is going to be much larger proportionally than 10 tactical officers given the totals you are adding them to.

Also from leveling more you are building your income (from both extra planets and better minerals) to sustain better tech, increasing your artifact production, which increases pretty much every aspect of defense over time along with more rescued prisoners for yet more engineers for even faster leveling. The higher defense will make it so you are still winning the battles and it will make it very annoying to disable you. Each level takes 40 more experience than the last so the 10 engineers from leveling keep you at a constant rate of leveling while the extra ones from rescued prisoners will make it shorter every time. If you stack this with good energy research, it would have to become a nearly insurmountable combo at some point. Getting 75% percent of your next level finished from a load of energy is twice as fast as getting 50% of your next level from a load and it only takes 50% more energy. There is no end to this phenomena; eventually it is just infinite. Relays also have an exponential return, though there is an end to it. The only way I don't consider engineers flat-out better is for planet invasions, which is based entirely on your attack stat. After your energy is larger than your attack might be more feasible to get tactical officers if you are interested in sheer leveling and dominant stats from it. A balanced strategy of the two might keep you a bit more sane but I knew I wanted to do something totally unbalanced and everything.

Engineers, definitely. Under the right conditions, you can rank multiple times in a row if you have the energy. I've done up to 15 at a time using high ratio missions. I prefer to build decks through artifacts, and fast ranking does this indirectly through more planets = more artifacts. You can squeeze a bit out of NPC module drops until rank income matches higher tech upkeep, then use high tech to get the most out of your precious space until the ship-bots become more plentiful. Think of it like investing.

3354 max energy at rank 252. You can do a LOT of NPC hunting when you rank up, if so inclined.

SpoonyJank, how insane is your energy now ?

I just started getting engineers 11 days ago. I went from Intra-D Mk IV generators to supernova Mk II generators since then as well and it takes 10 hours to level NPC hunting (blitzing with buffs) instead of 20. If I get energy cubes I can either only do crappy return missions or try to float XP over to the next level by hitting a bunch of bosses, but that is kind of tricky and not always possible. My energy is still only 1835 though. I should get the leveling time even shorter with MkIV generators and hyperchannel relays and more rescued prisoners. It's pretty hard to keep XP buffs active when NPC blitzing with even that much energy though. At some point I'll have to switch over to missions to get that last relay. I still won't have FATHER relays though.

I just began dumping points into engineers in the last week. I noticed my deck space was being unused so I decided to make the switch. I currently max at 1813 energy with two Supernova Generator mark 4's and one mark 2 (which will be upgraded in another 4.3B credits and 1800 Kurenite). I am just now starting the 1.6M rp climb to Flux Vibration Channeling. My general strategy going forward is to put my level up points into decks and use my rescued prisoners to increase Engineers. This will make sure that once I am done with energy in 13 days I will have the deck space to start working on much needed upgrades in other parts of the ship, most notably null rays. As it stands now, I have roughly 30 decks I'm not using. I will say the 730M daily maintenance is beginning to suck a little. I would go to a builder, but I don't think I want to lose the 10% artifact bonus since those are giving me prisoners and ship bots.

I ended up going away from Vygoid Excavator to Inergon Builder; I figured if I was going to put all my points into engineers, it made sense. And with less decks I needed better tech to conserve space, and thus builder to reduce costs. I realize that's the reverse of "when you have enough decks", I can't say which path is better for everyone, except the fact you will gain decks from AP sources faster, of that I am sure, until you have "enough". You can never have enough energy, since the need increases each level and I'm trying to keep up with it to reduce rank up time. As for tac officers... I think the benefit is marginal for the rank points cost; but some people surely build up a lot of them and then Drannik race makes some sense. I think that's a bit limiting though, but I admit NPC farming seems to be the highest XP yield activity.