This is just an example average. All that matters is your rank and your attack to calculating this. It seems that with a neural, you can still hit 4.0 even with that dreaded assassin, it's just a matter of having enough attack power.

nice job on the table.

You do have more commons available than a lot of us, though, so that would certainly help too. Still, you pulled that off with 7 attack/rank? I have almost 20 attack/rank and can't do that, seems like still having the Archivist and Chron Shifter really help.

Table doesn't take into account the damage cap on NPC's.

For instance, at rank 270, I have 5600 attack.
Still takes three hits to kill a Dark Runner.

Note that this is theoretical chart in excel, I can plug in any attack value. This is not my ship stats. I am around rank 200 right now but yes I have left in several mission npcs on purpose, zolazins are quite common. I have about 2k attack with only 15% attack bonus from 2 buffs, and about 1k more base possible if I had decks for 4 more weapons (1k base from 4x heavy antiprotons, 600 from 4x dom MK3, and like a vortul phaser), so about 10 attack / rank.

Concept here is , first of all that of sustaining high xp by sustaining a certain attack level for your rank. That is why the attack/rank logic there. 7 was just what was needed before to sustain 4.0 natural xp ratio, before the new npc showed up. One thing not shown is the spawn rate, as I haven't determined it yet. Runner/Charger/Hawk are the same for example, while the Data analyzer and tech collector are a bit lower. Zolazins appear to be the most common, with the Revenant appearing after rank 200. In perhaps 500-550 kills, I had about 25 archivists chips, so 5% or so of those.

Yes, the formula does use my damage calculator which includes damage cap. Thus, with the same attack per rank (if it's enough), the # of shots becomes easier with matched npcs as you rank. Harder NPCs require more att/rank to do this however (the ones with higher hull multiplier and/or defense multi). At lower ranks, the minimum shots is higher than at higher ranks. In other words you cannot physically 1 or 2 shot a charger below some rank, due to damage cap, regardless of attack, but at higher ranks you can reliably with a high attack.

Tech, modules, and buffs will carry your attack only so high , then it becomes a matter of excess rank points not needed for energy going into tac. Note if you can't autorank, energy is always better. If you can, tac is a viable option then. High AP allows you to do this; keeping a 4.0+ xp ratio simply means as you add all 5 rank points from ranking into engineers, you can continue to autorank, but you may not be maintaining your attack per rank without extra points from prisoners.

You see Flamehawks at your level?
Or is it just posted as a random NPC?

Not yet. I just have the entire list there.