I'm Rank 219, and I have quite a few gas planets that are Very Massive and Massive, and are Extremely Abundant with research.

Before today, I put about 3000 defense and 700 ~ 1400 attack on them. This morning I decided to remove all defense/attack to max out the research output (gained about 100 per hr).

I'd like people ranked around 250 or higher to respond.
The question is, do you guys think this is a good move (unguarding those planets)? I'm sure there will be lower ranking people who take them because they're unguarded, but I think I need to find or create more Massive+ "mega rich" planets.

In the Mega Rich category, here is what I have now:
18x mega rich (mining) - Massive
5x Mega Rich (Artifact) - Very Large
3x Mega Rich (Artifact) - Massive
2x Mega Rich (Artifact) - Massive
2x Mega Rich (Artifact) - Large
Mega Rich (Research) - Massive
Mega Rich (Artifact) - Massive

So basically, i just want to see what you guys think, because sometimes I do see higher ranking guys that keep these types of planets guarded (massive and extremely abundant).
Let me know what ya think

Yes let the Massives go at that resource availability. The Very Massives, are at least worthwhile keeping if you plan to switch to Kronyn or farm NPCs for Rogue Labpods (that drop Planet Data Optimizers).

Edit: I am Kronyn

Rank 263 -

So I say let them go to try to get the most out of them. If you are worried just a simple flux probe will let you know if anyone has them scanned but higher levels won't take them. As for lower levels well I am sure you can take it back if you really want to. If you are that worried then just add a Obv barrier and that will make most newbies rethink taking it.

However as a Kronyn, I see planets like that are a gold mine more or less down the road if you put time into them.

When I started, I only scanned planets every MARK IV scanner and made sure I buff up and slowly purge and once i hit the next tier, I do another scan.

Honestly, Other than sub-200 levels, I never filled up all my planet slots. Even now, I'm setting a requirement of what the planet needs to be for me to colonize and invade. The cost for me is almost 17bil to colonize and 34bil to invade. Unless they are fully upgraded, I won't waste my credits taking your planets.

NPC hunting is the best way to upgrade your planets to 17x Collossal Plasmas and 16x very large toxics and 15x very massive oceanic artifact planets/very large terra/etc

But before I got to optimal level of being able to farm NPCs in great numbers, I resorted to colonizing Small extremely rich and above planets.

Reason 1: Small planet with only production vs Very Large with production and defense gives you the same output.

Reason 2: No one is willing to invade your planet, even if they do, it's not a lost. In your case, Unless it's a Very Massive Gas planet with at least Rich resources, it's not worth colonizing. Over time, you see huge amount of them. They are not rare to find.

Reason 3: it fills in the gap when you have no choice, it's a fair compromise and a good boost to production when you cannot find any planets to fill in the planet slots (Not having it filled is waste of production.


Cons: Having 5-10% of all your planets is ok, but anything above that will be excessive and will cost you GP to get rid of. I still have 7 of these planets, no point in getting rid of something that still give me 150+ production and still have 30 slots left.

i am rank 470 at the moment and most of these planet i would be glad to have them taken

It's best to put just minimal defense on these types of planets. Since no high ranks want them, put just 1 defensive structure to discourage really low ranked players who haven't figured out how mediocre these planets are.

I've always advocated trying to max out your resources as much as possible. I see people losing 35-50 percent of production on good planets by putting in a lot of defense which doesn't even guarantee that it won't be taken.

I still have a VL mega rich gas with no defense on it. It's one of the first planets I colonized (why it's a vl with some upgrade, didn't know better back then). I've had it for almost a year and a half and it produces 270 research an hour. That's around 750k research points from 1 planet that I would have lost if I had put on as much defense as you had on previously.

My huge 15x stuff gets 14 spaces of cloak, and passive to get it to 12k. All others get nothing... except 15x toxics get passive att/def when I got excess drops, to ward off some people without losing space. A planet that's not upgraded is a drop in the bucket and I'm not going to stress over it.