What base production do you think is best for lower ranks and why.

You have

Artifacts- With Ship bots, Brackets , x-cellss. helmsmen , prisoners , storage pods, and scientist your able to increase your ships starts with out relying on ranking. You will most likely win raids. Cargo is an issue for lower ranks but with MSP you will not feel the stress of to much arts not nuff space. would be grate for slow rankers.

Minerals- Upkeep is not often a problem for lower ranks but base upkeep may be a problem. With the Mp u get you can keep the base afloat how ever by going AP and selling arts in the stores you can probably make more Creds.

Research - Players who have RP base drops will have access to better planet tech giving them better production off there planets all so better cloak shields and attack so it can help them keep there planets to. Better ship tech more bang for your space Who needs 50 more tactical officers when your 5 guns give you + 450 atk on the other guy. . same with hull shields , DEF and so on. How ever ship mods come with upkeep , and you need the space for them.


All and all I think RP is the best .The lack of artifacts I feel like it causes the players to go after planets like a pack of blood hounds trying to get every last planet they find. Having ship tech you cant afforded makes them want minning planets . RP seems to dangle goodies out of reach and makes the player have to work harder to get them .They have to up there MP to cover the cost, and there there AP for ship bots and other goodies. Out of all the productions I feel that wear AP just gives the bonus RP gives them the Tools to get the bonuses. I all so think that with RP base drops they can get LEGION BASE branch tech done sooner then others and become more productive to the legion / legion base.

I think MP is a joke.

what do you all think is best for lower ranks and why?

slow levelling with a research base for lower ranks to give them an advantage over the other ships

Artifact base for every type of gameplay... research planets are cheap and easy to find.

artifact for these reasons:
1. as you stated the perm ship enhancers are fantastic for low players and slow rankers.
2. you can sell arti's now in sufficient quantities to [ usually ] offset your own cost + planet costs + base costs, depending on base rank + modules.
3. this forces players to be dependant upon their planets for research instead of base production values.
4. if you cant afford the research it does nothing for you - offset by legion babies [ i.e. those who tell you your ship sucks when they belong to a powerfull legion and are obviously funded by higher level players; case in point, my brother im'd me a screenshot of a level 28 with neutronium armor and heavy anti proton cannons. - no i'm not going to share legion / player name. ]
5. no matter what level you are arti's are beneficial, and generally wont devalue.
6. mineral scales by level, raking in 60k mineral points of dynite, chrystium, and darinyte would crush my nuts, if i knew that i could sell 1 arti for 140 mill credits.

I say mainly research with a bit of arti thrown in. After seeing the results of this setup working amazingly well for some slow rankers back at TA, amd thats on level 5 output, even better with a level 6

Research is good for ranks <200. After that they should be making more than enough from their planets to keep up with.

Artifacts are great always. It increases research with androids.

Research for the lower ranks. That extra boost in research can get them a long way. At that point in the game, artis are of little concern and if they're low on cash they can always get a mining planet or a bunch of credits.

When you're around rank 150+, arti's are then your main priority. At this point you should have a decent research output and mining output. You should be getting more and more arti planets so you can get more ship bots and rescued prisoners.

I have to say to split it part research and part arti's for a lower ranking legion. I see many many low rankers wanting more research to upgrade their ship but I remember back when I was their rank and not ever having enough room for the new stuff I was getting. Having part arti will allow them to get the ship bots needed faster to grow while at the same time getting part research will allow them to upgrade their mods and upgrade their base tech while waiting for more ship bots. All in all you would get the best of both worlds. I would also offer that if you had to choose I would say make arti's higher then research.

Another thing to keep in mind is that since you are very high ranking and if you have other high ranking members in your legion (not sure if you do or not) you could help supply some good research worlds to your lower ranking members since they think a lot of your not so good worlds are really good. So you would be helping them that way as well building their research so they can grow faster as well. Where as legions that are ran by low rankers and only have low rank players in them can't do this as well.