I am around level 525, I have been only using ship bots for space for the last ~300 levels, and my ship size is 2068. About what size should i shoot for long term? Should i go ahead and go for large enough to install EVERYTHING, or should i concentrate on just getting the most efficient modules, and install/uninstall the ones I need as I use them. Go for a smaller ship build.

Troet

your going to get mixed responses, you need to decide what it is that you want and roll with that

As mentioned above, it all depends on what your focus in the game is. If it's missions or NPCing, your damage cap doesn't matter much, so bigger is usually better. For PVP, the main trade off is that smaller ship size means lower damage cap = generally harder to kill, *but* less decks = less room for scan/cloak for hacks/hack defense, plus more time consuming module swapping. To have max scan and cloak for hack defense and still have a low deck size requires uninstalling a lot of energy/attack/def/hull/shield modules to make room since those stats can be acquired from artifacts (prisoners/helms/brackets/xcharges) while scan and cloak can't. In early to midranks that can hurt your combat stats a fair amount, though the longer you play and have been acquiring those artifacts the more your crew/brackets/xcharges make up the bulk of your combat stats anyways. At high enough ranks, size-inefficient modules eventually become pretty worthless compared to a lower damage cap. But you do also have to weigh in the hassle of swapping modules due to lower ship size... it would be great if Dan could add some sort of uninstall flags to uninstall/install all modules with a certain flag at once instead of having to do them all one at a time, but right now it can take several minutes every time you want to swap modules around.

TLDR; the number of decks you want boils down to where you want your ship to be on the continuum between "Hardest to kill in the long run" and "Best stats right now / easiest to have room for all the scan/cloak and other modules with less uninstalling/swapping."

You probably already thought of most of that though... so if you're just looking for a specific number to shoot for, all I can give you is what I've opted for personally: I wanted a balanced build and felt 3700 decks was about optimal to fit in the most efficient modules, but still have 15-20% lower damage cap than a typical endgame 4400+ Colossal Galaxy Destroyer. However, my current stats are slightly lower than if I had all my modules installed all the time, and I spend quite a bit of time swapping modules around to optimize for whether I'm NPC hunting, PVPing, Base hunting, Ranking up, etc... which is a hassle many aren't willing or don't have the time to deal with. On the other hand, 3700 decks is by no means a small ship build, so there are plenty on the opposite side of the spectrum who are more hardcore about pure combat defense and would sacrifice even more modules than I do to have a much smaller ship that relies almost solely on crew stats. Ultimately it's up to you though how defense focused vs balanced you want your ship to be.

SO does ship size and damage cap matter for much, other then not being killed often in pvp? (I don't care about that), or does it also matter a bit in base raid fights?

I feel it important to stress that damage cap doesnt even really count for much in PvP simply because you are almost never going to hit it without using debuffs. Granted it takes more shots to kill somone with a lower damage cap, but thats about it. What the damage cap really counts for is base battles. So if base battels are important to you, then the smaller the better, otherwise do what makes you happy.

Like Elerian just said, it mainly counts for base battles because it's pretty damn hard to hit someone's max damage using a ship. However, bases have colossal amounts of attack (compared to ships) and easily hit damage caps

In that case should i stay around where I am for base fights, or go ahead and push higher?

I'm curious if anyone has more data on how the PVP damage formula works... as I understand it the "damage cap" is a bit of a misnomer, because your "damage cap" actually affects the entire formula for how much normal hits do to you even if they aren't powerful enough to hit you for "max damage." I.e. An average hit on a size 3000 ship is going to do less damage than an average hit on a size 4000 ship (assuming same defense and same power from the attacker), regardless of whether it hits hard enough to reach the cap or not?

your forgetting critical hits, i can hit someone for 400 damage, and then turn around and hit them for 1000 damage if i crit. And as an explorer I crit often enough to where I dont really care what their damage cap is. An SSB uses only size efficient mods to maximize on their cap, cloaking is not something that they take on, and because of such if you have a relativly mediocre scan you can crit them without much hassel, Im rank 390 now and I have 7k scan, I look at SSB's and and - for the most part - know how many shots it will take me to eat through the main portion of their hull, the only X factor they have going for them is that I dont know how many brackets thatt ehy have ever gotten. Now granted I'm not in golgotha's rank range and I'm sure he has built a fine ship, but i know the average attack / defense of a PvP intensive player at my rank range, and frankly SSB - from what I can read - only seems to pay off at the end game. So unless you plan on speed ranking up then I suggest you bolt your hull mods down if your going SSB

This is not true at all. The cap affects every hit.

2 ships both have same def

One has 2k decks. The other has 4k.

If on average I do 500 per shot to the guy with 2k, I will average 1k per shot on the other guy.

You are correct.


Combat Formula Approximation

Damage per shot = tanh( attack*(random(0.6 to 1.666)) / (defense * 5) ) * damagecap

I know as soon as I say this, so folks will disagree with my "name dropping," but I think it is fairly safe to say some players have made some great ships and they serve as the prototype of their build. Few people can argue that Frail pretty much showed us the way of an energy ship. Few people can argue that Golgotha has done a masterful job with the damage cap on his mid size boat. Likewise for Ejjakai; one of the earliest small ship players in the game. If I had to do it over again, I would probably go lower on my deck size.

I think it is safe to say that we all watched the ascent of Frail with awe, and there is a reason why his style became dominant in the galaxy for so long after.

In the end though, you can only do what style suits you the most. There is no "best" style, just different advantages and disadvantages...

However, for those of you who want to know more about damage caps, check out this thread

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=30522

It contains a spreadsheet that has the formula built in, allowing you to see damage delt and received vs any ship you desire. The only thing it does not include is critical hits, which i do not beleive that anyone has worked out yet.

My guess is that it affects the (random(0.6 to 1.666) part, (higher scan bias towards higher end) but sadly i have no facts to support it at all.

i can only tell ya what i know from my own personal experience, ive seen some good SSB, where we are dealing even damage on the norm, then ive seen some so-so SSB's that are just aweful. Im not huge on attacking people at the moment so i dont have as wide a variety to draw upon than others.

the easiest way for me to understand it is this

Attack and defence stats determine the percentage of your damage cap taken as damage.

When attack=defence, you take roughly 20% of your damage cap in damage.

So say we both had 10k attack and defence, and i had a 1k damage cap and you had a 3.
With the same stats, i would take 200 damage a hit and you 600.

However, i would obviously need to have much better artifact income than you to have equal stats to a ship twice my size. More likely, you will have 50% more than my defence, and roughly the a third more attack

Now, I would take 280 damage per hit still, and you would take 440. Even though your ship is stronger, mine takes less damage, but suddenly the gap has closed.

HOWEVER - and this is the part people forget, the small ship often will not have hulls and shields installed, or at the very least less of them.

If the bigger ship has more health than the little ship, which is very easily possible, it is still "stronger" than the small one. In all honesty, this is the more likely scenario, as the little ships havent had time for artifact prodiuction yet.

This is why small ships are good - fear. You are attacking, and doing very little damage per hit. You dont know how much hull is left, and they are still there, and outdamaging you every hit. In your head, this makes them stronger, vastly stronger.
Most often, unless you are well known, people dont even look at your ship size. They tap you a few times on the BT, do horribly little damage even fully buffed, and give up without trying.

Now, its a whole new ball game after a year or two's artifact income, as modules stop being 50% more defence, and become say 20%. Slowly the ratios shift in the smaller ships favour. THe longer you play, the more the damage system benefits you.

Its taking the long view. The very long view. But it works. But dont keep your planets purged, because people hack the hell out of you

Thanks for the info KJReed and Golgotha, I was pretty sure I had seen where someone had run the numbers on how damage cap affected the combat formula, but I don't stalk the forum a lot and didn't feel like taking the time to hunt the thread down again myself.

The formula is handy. Some of us are retentive enough to pop it into Exel and model out our average damage against various ship configs. You can quickly determine what your average damage per hit will be, how much energy will be required to take someone out, how many repairs they'll have to do to kill you, etc. Yes, keeping your decks down is very, very useful.
One last thing: taking lower damage buys you time when someone is trying to take you out while you're online. If they can't kill you before the queued alerts are sent, you have a good chance of holding them off.

Especially when defending exotica, or any other time you get the crap debuffed out of you and they are always hitting your cap.