Just to point out a little something in your thought process. You have it saying research over mining over artifacts……… ok ill give you the research to a degree. But artifacts are just as important as research and mining is the least of your worries when starting out and trying to get bigger. You want your artifacts to be just as high as your research the more ap you have the better your chances of getting ship bots, rescued prisoners, android scientists and helmsmen, the 10 point hull and shield artifact. Those artifacts will grow your ship the most so that you are able to use the rp you are researching.

Fantastic points on leveraging Cargo Artifacts and seeking the Artifact "sweet spot" to get Cargo Artifact gains.

Agreed have not put a point towards Cargo after first Artifact appeared.

Thanks to all who have posted on this link!

The only time I ever had any need to swap modules out was to do a mass scanning blitz, and when I did that I put the most expensive modules (that would fit) into my cargo space and sold the rest, did the scanning blitz, then sold off the scanners and re-equipped everything again. My very first planet was a moderately decent Mining planet so I never had any concerns about wasting a small amount of money to sell and buy cheap modules when I didn't have enough cargo space.

got 1710 cargo space now.. found 3 mass storage since I last posted. Artifacts FTW

Yep, definitely!

My usual personal formula that I followed since I joined last May is Research production = Artifact production > Mining Production at 50%.. Ratio 1:1:.5 and it's working nicely to my benefit. I try to keep research and artifact production at about equal all the time and both gives me nice boost to my ship and planets and many others.. My hull, shield and crewmen are getting really very big from constant stream of those artifacts from 5k Artifact points per hour..

Lot of high rank players are struggling with money. I didn't find myself struggling yet and I still carry 5 B credit and it seems is balanced so far. I still have low upkeep even with my huge ship. Only 650 M per day simply cuz I didn't go fast on tech tree. I get my ship huge without any cost of upkeep increase all thanks to artifacts and NPC farmings. All artifact boosts to ship will not even increase upkeep at all that alone gives huge benefit..

Yes, investing any rank points into cargo is horrible move. It's too easy to get improved via high artifact production.. I'm approaching to 3k cargo space mark fast.. I could speed it up but I always avoid mass cargo cuz I always claim everytime I hit 10k AP instead of 20k.

What I do is i try to balance my per hour production so reach my cap within 8 to 10 hours. if a resource is getting maxx capacity in less than 7 hours (mostly research) (people tend to over do research which easily bankrupts them..) if you follow this pattern you will be somewhere within Noci's ratio but artifact will be a bit higher because the capacity for artifacts is a lot bigger.

Eg for a level 164
42 planets max
42000 planet capacity on artifact points 12 hours to capacity is 3500
21000 planet capacity on mineral points 12 hours to capacity is 1750
24600 rank research capacity. 12 hours to capacity is 2050

you can do 10 hours for each resource too but then artifacts will still be higher. if you have very low mineral production.. you will suffer with the upkeep and building of the modules.. having too high research will mean you will not be able to pay for the module or not really make the upkeep. ( i hope i made sense)

Yeah, I tend to have little higher artifact production than research for long time simply because it's easier to find/make nice artifact planets than research planets (Oceanic planets and I have 37 of them). My artifact production is about 500 to 600 higher than research so far and it didn't even handicap me at all. It would be nice to be AP=RP (only if you got crazy high production in both heh) but AP>RP definitely works well. I just realize that I'm approaching to rank #8 (8 M now and slowly approaching and gap is smaller. I used to be 5M gap but now just 3M) in research leaderboard and I'm only Konqul since birth. Unbelievable cuz I didn't really pursue research much. I only am addicted to artifact production. Artifact production rules!! I'm just so glad that I went heavy on it since I first joined GL.. I wish that there would be leaderboard category for artifact leaders. ;( Ah well!!