I thought i might give this a second life. I would add that people should really put all rank points into engineers or a heavy balance towards then. Dont worry about pvp as much early and you can be a monster later. I have seen it first hand.

i wanted to pass on a little experience i have had with this game. at first i was not sure to research and went for planetary production and energy research. once i reached a level where i really could not afford to buy what i had researched i stopped. i started researching scanning and found my planets, and only took ones that were rich and one extremely abundant. i went back to energy until the next tier was 18000. at this point i let myself get distracted and got good defense, cloaking shields and weapons.

the point i wanted to pass on, is this. energy is so much the lifeblood of this game. its nice that i have Heavy Phase Canons, Subspace Sensors Mark III, Spacial Thrusters, EM Adaptive Panels, Subspace Sensor - Mark III and the rest for my level at rank 50. i feel if i didnt feel the sticker shock of 18000 for the next level of energy and get distracted researching other tiers. i would have been a number of ranks farther then i am now. i know all the other tech help me defend my planets, but i really can only defend one at a time. if i had stuck with energy and planetary production i would be researching faster and making more credits. i also could have offset inferior weapons etc with more of then given additional deck space and caught up later with those techs at a faster rate.

so for new players my mantra would be energy first, planetary production second and scanning third. level up faster by not fighting or hacking. run missions that give you really good experience return for energy and ones that unlocks more missions. dont worry about those big missions the ones that give you artifacts until you reach a level where it wont take you 2 weeks to complete a 2 week mission. i feel those are more suited for higher level players who can actually put a dent it it by leveling up/overnight energy. since this is not like other games where people can try to "rush" you, your better building your economic base and energy reserve/production rate first.

these are just my observations. im sure that many aggressive player will may disagree, but i think a little patience early will pay off in the end....

I agree with the original post completely; even if you get so much energy that people at your level are stronger than you, you'll be stronger than people who started at the same time as you, and energy is what allows you to actually play the game anyway.

But your so weak. Once your rep starts dropping, it drops fast. Once you hit 'laughable' you logg on everyday disabled. Why would you want that?

That isn't true, and it would hardly make a difference anyway. Even if you did log on everyday disabled, you could just repair and then do whatever you want. Why would you want to log on everyday with no energy to use?