I want to do lazuli for the npc slot.
I want to do mylaria because of the hull item, hydroshifter, plasma lance, stripcore mine, etc.
Which first guys?
(btw im kronyn atm)

I would say mylaria to make your ship stronger so the extra NPC's are easier when you get them.

it really depends how strong your ship is. if NPCing is easy for you now, then get the extra two slots. if you constantly have to repair, then go for the mylarai chain. and by constantly repair i mean you can only kill 3 NPCs before you die. but if you can easily take 10 or more with your current set up, definitely go for the lazuli chain. it gives out some NICE rewards.

mylarai, thats what i am now, and as for easy NPC's i've had it easy for a while now, and still happy i have done mylarai (boosting mining planets atm)
going to do kronyn next to boost research planets, and i like the other kronyn mission mods/artifacts.

and taltherian after that.

going to be a long year or two, or three...

Lazuli chain is around 71.3K energy + NPCs to get the slots. 111300 to finish.
Mylari chain is 136875 energy to complete.

If you NPC a lot then the myarai bonus doesn't look so good. I've killed 20k NPCs and got lots of toxic purifiers. The 6 NPC slots are useful if you're a heavy NPCer. Got mine about 20 ranks ago. I'm rank 490. The mission after the extra NPC slots is also usefil to boost attack and energy.

Of course those strip core mines are nice to have on an 18x mining massive irradiated planet.

If you're not heavy on NPC hunting then boost your ming is always useful in which case the Mylarai chin might be tempting.

i think ll do the lazuli first then. npcing is easy for me.