I agree with Nocifer about using Artifact Points in higher amounts, 1250 RP (+crew) gives me plenty of time to spend it , 740 minerals (a bit too much but I have some mineral only planets), 875 AP. Research has diminishing returns over time due to increasing cost of projects per time, but artifact chance or ratio of getting things that boost your ship permanently is directly proportional to your AP income over time. I used to have minimal AP but now I adjusted from Vygoid to Human and boosted AP by choosing planets for it not just gas planets for research. The result is regular upgrades from crew bots and rescued prisoners, at some point you get more than you get from leveling (esp. as level increases and planets with AP increase). Good advise from the Dysonians. I'm now #1 ranked in my legion and growing fast from energy tech focus + 300 engineers (the only thing afaik that you can't increase with crew artifacts tho rescued prisoner will do it of course, I did this early when leveling was fast and it helps when using cubes or level refill on energy, my best possible energy is nearing 1000). NPC farming when you get to 4 targets and have good tech is also pretty good, tho I have done some casual PVP to unlock missions. Game's more fun with artifacts

Yeah, NPC farming+high AP is a great combo as a best way to boost your ship's power without increasing your upkeep too much that means you won't have to rely on increasing mining too much early on if you go on high RP route that would force you to switch to builder class. I still am enjoying high AP and my ship constantly is getting bigger especially in crew size cuz I get free ship-bot, vaults and rescued prisoners a lot from AP and NPC huntings that actually makes my deck size to grow bigger than I really need but nice as cushion available size ready to take in any new NPC modules that Dan kept throwing in, lol. I'm approaching 1,600 tactical officers now cuz I used 5 RPs per rank up plus some rescued prisoners into officers rather than deck size. It gets easier as my AP goes up. I am finding myself little more focused on mining however because I'm now in high tech realm that really is starting to eat up lot of money. I still am enjoying just 1.3B per day upkeep even with extremely high attack power of 6,242 UNBUFFED and I had seen some players with lower attack power (much lower) but upkeep is well over 5B a day.. That is sick, lol. I really am not in any hurry to do research cuz AP will supply me what I need for my ship for free and won't require any mining upgrades to support.. NPC modules are awesome too, they are really cheap with upkeep when added to the ship..

Very interesting.
I'm at Rank 178 and have noticed the effects you have written about.
Looking through my planet list I just found a nice AP planet that I took from a rank5 person. Pretty confident he's no longer playing the game.

I was Vygoid Builder at the start and hitting my RP limit all the time and had been picking gas planets for RP, but now research is slowing, I am at rank 115; most good planets can be either RP or AP as you need it. With my old planets that are basically only good for mining, I am getting much more credits than I can even use for my tech level, so I am focusing on AP now. 800 MP, 950 AP, and 1500 RP is what I have so far (gas planets you can't do anything but RP with, kind of stuck with them for now, still RP heavy; same with volcanic/barren MP worlds). I try to get the highest AP I can while maxing RP in no less than 10 hours. I think Vygoid excavator could actually do best here since they get a bonus to both RP/AP (and if you hit RP limit you just switch for more AP); I'm currently trying Human for the XP boost, but there's not a profession there that I care about, I just got Miner which is not that useful. As leveling slows more, I will probably get tired of trying to power up the ship by leveling up and researching and just do an all-AP focus, which unlike most of the other techniques is not really limited by level and can provide you (if randomly) with pretty much every other benefit; what you can't roll you can farm apparently, esp. rare artifacts.

I'm actually interested in joining the Dysonians one day, but it's not time yet. I usually play by the maths, calculating drop ratios etc (although they change) and optimizing play accordingly. I've been trying to figure out if the drop table changes for artifacts if you have a higher AP when you roll it (not just from the added possible artifacts at higher AP). So far it seems to be dropping more perm. boost artifacts when I save up, but maybe it's just my imagination.

"So far it seems to be dropping more perm. boost artifacts when I save up, but maybe it's just my imagination."

I think your on to something. I have to agree but have not recorded my Artifacts/AP/received. It would be nice if DAN was more open with the formulas he has programed into the game.

RP are still nice. Each tier increases module efficiency about 7% and increases your maximum ability... permanently. AP might be more linear but it is something where you have to maintain that production for it to be an actual percentage increase in power, otherwise that percent will decrease as you level, that is not true for RP. AP might be better at higher levels, but eventually decks will become a non-issue anyways, even sooner in terms of your maximum capability of a certain thing.

PS: I just think it makes sense to get +10 buildings set up before your upkeep gets to ridiculous levels, just for the sake of efficiency.

That makes a lot of sense to me. Efficiency is something that I strive for, and urks me when I fail at. Like again, using cubes in a rush instead of switching out conduits for cores... UGH...

I have 700 decks, with so much more to still squeeze in and still so much more than that to research then squeeze in, do decks really someday become a non-issue?

~Drake

if you are AP heavy it might still take until rank 300 to have too many decks. I have 1326, but would need probably 2000 to have everything possible installed. I get 10-13 decks a level by now.

Each research tier is 3 or 4 times more expensive than the last, if it weren't exponential, it would get insanely expensive insanely fast. The one sure thing is that you will end up there some day anyways and having enough decks might never happen, so it makes a lot of sense to hoard AP instead of trying to max out 2 whole other types of resources instead.

I totally agree with shooting for the +10 buildings. I was at 3,000 RP an hour or so and I did a blitz from +6 to +10. It took me a long time, and the 12 billion credits that I had saved up by that time only let me upgrade maybe a third of my 40 or so planets. It was expensive for a few weeks, but once you get everything upgraded you definitely see the results. The nice thing is that all your planets operate at near peek efficiency, and money becomes a near non-issue once all your planets are topped off.

I figure until my deck gain from AP is high enough to fit all my current tech, I'm better off trying to maximize AP. I sacrificed decks for 300 engineers early on when the leveling was fast and didn't realize the impact (intending to do all-energy build like I do for other FB games that I don't care about because you can level faster and spend 5 minutes a day dumping energy, then ended up liking this game and realizing that a bunch of stuff wasn't accessible unless you diversified -- good job Dan! A real game design!). It did pay off in terms of fast leveling, but I'm a little light on decks for my rank. I've noticed the "fun factor" increased a lot with artifacts and using them, where research for me was just "spent it, done". I don't regret switching to AP at all (and I still got plenty of RP to fill in on techs I neglected).

People here seems to forget another benefit from high AP production is those planetary artifact structures. Warp Gate rocks.. 1,1,1 for just freaking size 1! I have almost planets equipped with all planetary structures possible for max result and it can happen immediately while RP takes time and can eat up lot of space but nice supplement however.. I have all excessive planetary structures waiting to put all on new planets as soon as I rank up every 4 ranks..

I like the star chart purgers. I get 2-3 a day with 3700AP/hr. The chassis are all full except for where they get only sparse or something. It is kind of sad when more than half of what you get is worth scrapping though.

Heh, I hate purgers. I stopped using it 2 months ago I think cuz my AP is at the point that I get lot of charts to find uncolonized planets and I haven't done any planet scanning in 2 months and I found maybe 70 planets via charts alone then why need purger if it has zero effect on charts? Purgers are great at start when scanning was useful and AP was low but when you have very high AP, purgers become worthless..

Oh, then lend me a few

Yeah, at super high AP you will be able to deploy all special artifact structures every time, nothing beats that for efficiency, even if the planet resources isn't well suited for some of them. I'm at +6 buildings so fitting in 1 space specials is starting to look really good for "filling in the cracks". Agree that at some point star charts are the only thing that's going to work anymore.

lol, I have to agree, now that I'm in the level 200s I'm finding it a great addition to start pumping up AP, but my RP is still the lions share, and I still have not been able to upgrade everything to the RP level I'm at because my RP dumping far outstrips my ability to add decks and get minerals, though I'm nearly up tot he top teir on all buildings on all planets so soon minerals will be a nothing, and AP are a great boon for adding decks at this point, get a neural interface, an RSL drop, a couple energy cubes use one of every temp booster, and farm the NPCs, kind of annoying though because I miss doing mission chains. sometimes I go on mission chain binges though. Still the missions are never as good a return as the NPCs, though the ones which require you to farm an NPC are using HINDERED byt the fact that the NPC is of a lower ratio than the mission XD

I love purgers right now. I have high AP also, but the problem is that most of the planets found are mediocre or just plain crap. My plan is to stock up on charts. So in a month from now after my total found planets have been lowered by using purgers, I can do one final scan blitz at max scanners. Then use the charts after. (Then, I'll learn to hate the purgers )

Noc explained this to me a long time ago back when I had just joined DOO and I was still a noob and I've found it to be a realy good way to boost your ship. I level slower than others but I do this on purpose since it allows 2 things. One, I have more time to farm boss shares and get the mods I need before leveling past the share range, and tow, it allows for a pretty tough ship for your level. Also the greatest thing about high AP production is those Arties come in real handy in pvp. As it stands right now I'm an arti producer for my legion and I probably give half of them away. Currently I'm rank 94 and have 623 decks, 1364 attack, 831 defense, 1060 hull with only 2 overcharged Q-phased platings, 130 sheilds w/ no shield mods (titanim brackets realy add up). I probably won't be able to beat nocs titan by mid 90s but I'll come close. Currently my intake is 823 rps/hr 622 m/hr and 1520 aps/hr. The down side to high research is that you research faster than you can install the mods on your ship. The beauty of high ap/hr is you increase your ship strength and it isn't limited by level or ship size. And eventually when ship size becomes less relevant and can keep pace with your research, you can invest a lot more rank points into crew to boost stats so your getting improvements both ways from research and crew.

The thing about research is, you can get higher efficiency per unit of space, even though the modules are bigger. Same with planet buildings. The artifact chassis are always better than anything you can build for the space but limited. I max out research in 10 hours, enough time for sleeping, but all the rest are going to AP now. Weapon research directly increases max possible damage output, which increases XP/energy ratio farming NPCs (plus whatever item gains from the same). Energy research increases level gains and energy rate. It's worth it.

Yes but w/o the deck space to instal a decent amount of them it may not neccissarily pay off. You might gain a very little in that stat but be paying up to 4 times the upkeep.

Plenty of artifacts are NOT useful in their ability/deck ratio. I don't think there is much point to high AP until you have at least researched your buildings chain to all 10s anyway, and if you are doing that then you're going to have to research your other chains (particularly energy, and scanning) too.I have done quite well for myself by following the research chains and now that I;'m finally high enough rank to be getting elite share NPCs more commonly the NPC farming is making me happier, but that also means I need more AP, so that I can have good artifacts for NPCs and still have some left for PvP. Particularly now with the change to raiding I don;t have to worry as much and got rid of a lot of the clutterfacts and consolidate them into stacks regularly 1500 AP is a boon but until recently it was all about my 4000 RP/hour. I mean how else could I get myself level 10 buildings so quickly? but 4000 RP/hour just isn't enough for the next round of energy upgrades =( and AFAIK the building upgrades aren't any further than 10 yet, so AP it is for a while. I'm just going to fill gaps with the RP constant and keep increasing AP methinks.

-Q