I REALLY want my overcharged and/or hypercharged bane emitters. I currently have four npc slots and am thinking of power leveling through the mission chain starting with Unstoppable Forces to unlock tactical re-modulation, the ability to refresh npc's every 8 hours. Maybe part of the Lazuli mission chain as well, to unlock two more slots. I know there are drawbacks to power leveling, though. I will have less research done per rank, fewer decks (and artifacts) per rank, and less minerals and credits accumulated per rank. However, this could be partially or fully counteracted by later slowing down my leveling up. What thoughts do people have on this?

do you have the EM required?
if so, do it...more levels = more decks to put more modules into.
why have 4 def modules when the limit is 8? why have those npc drops sitting in your hold when they could be mounted and working for you?
i'm sure you'll find a use for the extra space

The Lazuli chain needs you take take out some NPCs before you reach the mission which gives 2 extra slots.

True power levelling is done by hunting NPCs. It's a fine art which is harder to do since the new NPCs came out. Dave - legion leader at Torment - know how t do it.

I have 4 slots too at rank 440+. Got 2 more episode to complete to get another 2 slots from the Lzauli chain. I'm not to bothered about tactical remodulation because the energy it takes is too much and with 4 slots they'll quickly fill up with unwanted NPCs.

I think it's basically getting you ship to a decent size then putting rank points into energy. It's what I did but I made my ship a lot bigger with rank points than Dave. I have much higher defence than him and can rank twice a day if I'm not contributing energy into the base. Before the new NPCs he could rank 4 or 5 times in a day. He's got a pretty good ship too.

The big problem is research more than anything. Dave's level twice as fast as me or faster but I've done a lot more research. The mian problem I have is having the mining to manage my upkeep and planet colonisations costs.

The other thing is doing scans regularly to get good planets. These cost a lot and unless you have really high AP there's not enough star chart purgers.

Hunting NPCs means you get Rogue Lapbops and Blade Harvesters to boost production but there's no regular NPC which boosts artifact production.

Tactical remodulation is a good thing to have but if your attack is high enough then it doesnt matter what the npc is. I know certain parts of my ship are better and some are worse than other around my rank (currently 459).

Tbh I wouldnt bother with Tactical Remodulation its a 1 shot deal every 8hrs and you will likely just get the same npcs soon enough anyway. I would add more attack and more engineers to be able to deal more damage to npcs rather than trying to avoid them, otherwise you will become too reliant on it and in the long run, much like being Sillix, its a bad thing.

If you try to get your attack to around 25 times your rank then you shouldnt have too many problems with npcs.

As far as power levelling goes, if you cant wait then why the hell not.

I'm not increasing my attack anytime soon because of my high upkeep, and I'm adding nothing but decks with rank points for now.

By the way, I did jump 12 ranks yesterday going through those missions. I am now rank 363 Vygoid Builder and owe my legion mates over 200k em. Even though I power leveled, I think I'm still pretty good for my rank. My hourly production is 6728 minerals, 6633 artifact, and 9031 research. I have finished the scanning research tree and am on the last tier of weapons, shields, and cloaking. I can build +12 resource structures. I have done a total of 33.9 million points of research.

Here's my stats:

Decks: 2993/3002
Attack: 4168
Defense: 5317
Scan: 2421
Cloak: 2313
Cargo: 12545
Upkeep: 1.8B
Hull: 9644
Shield: 2570
Max energy:2084
Energy recharge: 95/hour
Shield recharge: 3558/hour

Research levels:
Quasi-Chaotic Force 1/3
Supernova Generation 4/4, Proxy-Universe Reactions 0/4
Flux-Vibration Channeling 1/1
Force Obviation Fields 1/3
Inverse Flux Jamming 0/3 (working on it now)
Fermionic Unification 3/3, Syncopated Phase Matter 0/3
Trans-Temporal Travel 3/3, Exergonic Inversion 0/3
Continuum Analysis 3/3
Star Lifting 3/3, Topopolis Rings 0/1
Phase Transference 1/1, Dimensional Logistics 0/3

Am I doing pretty good for my rank?