See the latest update.

There is now no gain in keeping your decks under your rank.

Let me know how much energy it took before and the damage per shot versus now since Dan changed the stats. I would be interested in seeing what real world effect the new rules have.

Also, while that patches those little scouts with very little decks, it doesn't fix the overall problem that a superior ship with superior crew and modules can only do about half the raiding/hacking on a smaller ship.

Lol! That update obliterates the viability of high rank scout players. Good luck to those players.. Sorry.. We won't see high rank scout players anymore as they are being forced to increase their ship size as only one way choice.. I liked the idea of x-wing vs Death Star style but oh well.. I never forget LaRaine who was rank 100ish scout who brought my star destroyer down when I was almost rank 200 last summer.. I sure loved that idea and she impressed me and she became a Dysonian as a result... But she can't stand the severe restriction when it came to sticking the scout class at high rank so she went ahead to expand her ship size..

It would seem to me a better alternative would have been an attack cap on your class of ship because the way it is now, a level 20 scout ship will have no problem disabling a level 200 scout ship. That is not fair either. Also, before implementing this change, you should have the option to re-assign your rank points, now either you have to reset or quit the game. Probably many will just quit. Now there are only 2 types of ships, hackers and big ships. You might as well take out the options for using rank points for anything but decks and cargo, using them any other way would be a complete waste. I did do a reset and tried a small ship approach, with this update, I think I will try another game. I know many people are happy with this update but I think it takes alot of fun out of the game.

Putting rank points into Engineers is a plenty good idea, and at some point it would be good to put some in tactical officers also. But yeah, it does kinda suck that some whining from some people ruined other people's play style and entire build. It would be good if they could reallocate their points.

I scrapped my bigger ship, restarted, and went with the little mean ship design. It was a HUGE trade off. Of course, the big ships I dropped got all pissy about how unfair it is that I could waste them. They never went for the critical hack that I was so vulnerable to... not one. They just whined, called me a cheater, it's so unfair. They neglected to protect against a built in vulnerability to a big ship. If they had a thick enough hull, or enough energy, they could kill me at will, or be protected. Now I have a useless piece of junk. Thanks. Three months of build. Wasted. I dont get my rank points back to build big. I don't get to readjust my research tree. The scout fighter was the only counter to farmers. Guess what... the biggest pain in the butt to deal with as a small ship.... was another small ship. I had to deal with it to in legion fights. Any good sci-fi flick has fighters attacking big ships.... happens in real war too... the biggest ships... the Yamato and the Musashi, the biggest battleships ever built, were sunk by little airplanes. One torpedo bomber could land a critical hit, and the fleets carried thousands of little guns for air defense... and they still got through. Our current Navy has a bunch of little ships to defend against air attacks, and take the hits to protect the carriers... ONLY because they are a runway for the LITTLE PLANES. Otherwise, they are useless. Our entire surface Navy is focused on the transport and support of fighter craft. The old damage cap reflected reality. The biggest ship will always win... until it becomes so big that it is vulnerable to the little one. A more realistic approach would be to have a mission build, or research to install fighter defenses. Make it take take deck space. It should involve considerable investment that distracts away from other aspirations. To furthur advance this concept... U-boats weren't very big either. A torpedo right under the deck armor... a battleship with armor thick enough to stop a torpedo would sink, or not be protected above.... trade offs. As long as a level 200 can attack a level 60, there has to be a weakness. This is now a big ship only game.

Just wanted to say... whos getting all pissy now that it no longer works X-D
so it took you 3 months, so what, get over it and try again.

I am a big ship level 111 and a deck of 540+ starting to research null ray the cap was never a problem for me I have more decks and I can amp my hull and def a scout would have to refill energy 4 or 5 times to even make me get worried. Urbanni makes a good point and if scouts are so much a problem then why has it been the attack style of almost every army in the world. I think the cap was fine if you are a bigger ship then you had the opp to increase your def and hull I see a bunch of crying for nothing if you are changing the dmg cap then change the ship cap too I can hit any level from 1 to 1000 if you need to have the change to the dmg cap then at least make it so a 250 can't hit a 40 with this new cap then I would think it only fair to make a level cap of only 20 or 30 levels. so I could only hit a level 81-141 and i would only be in the attack range of about the same. The new cap is more size friendly now and we went from one ex-stream to the other. The cap was a fair cap even a def and hull raised could have changed the out come of a lot of battles with a scout class. i think the change is a sad example of I am big and your small so now I am going to pummel you

I don't see how anyone would get anything done in GL with less than 1 deck per rank. It's also pretty hard unless you are specifically doing no artifacts to not get any shipbots but a decent rank... unless we're talking about ppl sitting at low rank and decks just to pvp farm, but honestly why? Once you have your cannons the other stuff isn't worth stifling the rest of the game. There is a lot of stuff you cannot physically do without enough decks due to mission requirements. Low decks also means trouble fitting all defense/hull modules with the weapons, so I don't really see how it's viable except at very low ranks.

Not really.

You can easily live off planet shares if you are in a decent legion. Energy, defense and attack can all come from crew. Cargo has no influence on deck size.

What would you need decks for?

Yeah. Sorry. ;( I liked the idea of more viable paths that tiny ships can be viable as well as big ships but comes with trade-offs. Tiny ships already have lot of inherent disadvantages (lack of planets, rank up slow, etc) before the nerf. The nerf put a final nail to the scout's coffin for viability at high rank area..

I think that Dan had to nerf it all because of soo many crybabies emailing to Dan, "That scout is a cheat! Hacker! " etc etc.. Dan got tired of hearing so decided to nerf just to SHUT those whiners up.. It's amazing how ignorant those crybabies are..

The damage cap on players frequently annoys me when trying to invade planets
e.g. a level 21 is guarding a planet, i wear down the pop, but i have to hit the player more than enough times(wasting my energy) before i can invade