Does anybody know just how powerful the Stryll VX Outpost is? I want to be able to kill it quick, and am level 74, almost 75. Thanks.

Its matched to your level. My guess would be yes.

I found that it was pretty easy to kill.

What do you get from it?

Mine was 800 attack 600 defense and 1400 hull. I had 1200 attack and 1200 hull with 1400 defense and 400 shields. Killed it in 12 hits!

As easy and any common NPC in my level! Not hard at all!

Got a Stryll Containment Cage with 10 space for 50 hull and 20 cloak! Four units max installed. Nice loot!

I'm level 169, and the last one I killed had 1500 HP and no shields. I can't remember the attack/defense, but I killed it in 5 hits. There are tougher common NPC's out there than the Stryll VX-Outpost. I've almost got 2500 attack and have over 2000 defence though so that might explain why.

The one matched for my level is going to be quite tough to Kill. I'm a level 60, 418 Attack 233 Defence and a masive 340 combined shields/hull, and the Stryll Outpost has 400 Attaci 250 Defence and 1000 hull. It outguns me by way of it's defence and has way too many hull points for me to quickly deal with

A question for future referance if when I do the missions again I uninstalled my weapons shielding just before spawning the Stryll Outpost will it be scaled to my then weakend stats and all I have to do is reinstall my armourments and pound away at it, or will doing that make no differance to the strength of the spawned Outpost?

doubt it will make a difference since it's stats are level based and it always matches your level. Try it though and let us know how it works out for you.

Yeah, the matching is always based on your level, not your stats. This means that the difficulty is always the same for people of equal level, although in reality the difficulty of any NPC is actually due to the modules you currently have available, your deckspace, and the artifacts you're currently using.

My personal philosophy is this: when you're fighting, put everything into weapons first, followed by defence, followed by shields, followed by hull last. Do not equip any sensors, cloaking and unnecessary energy modules because they have no use in combat and take up valuable deckspace that could be used by another more useful module. Constantly check your modules during combat as well; if you've got energy modules equipped because you've got a high amount of energy to use, make sure you unequip them at the earliest available opportunity once you've used some energy and replace them with another combat-helping module. You may also prefer to put hull before shields; hull modules give you more hit points than shields, but at early levels it is very cheap to repair your hull. It certainly isn't at later levels though so shields become more attractive since they constantly self-repair.

The Outpost will stay in your battle tab PERMANENTLY until you kill it, so if you're finding it too tough, wait a few levels or refocus your research into weapons or defence. But the Outpost will take up an NPC slot so you may miss out on other NPC's because of this. Also make sure you equip some artifacts - Grid Consoles, Ancient Crystal Foci, Crimson Obelisks, Crimson Amplifiers, and Shield Amplifiers, before you start attacking. Attack until you're dead, or very close to it, then use a Nanite Swarm to double your hull strength, THEN repair. You won't have to wait to repair twice then. Use a Shield Restorer at this point too, as it will give you your full, currently-double-strength shields thanks to the Shield Amplifier you hopefully used earlier.

If your attack is low, you should consider buying two Radiant Surge Cannons as well, but they cost REAL money, and the strength of the cannon is based on ranks - you get access to a more powerful version (For the same cost) every 100 levels. The weapons don't auto-upgrade either; you have to buy new cannons every 100 levels if you want to keep having the best available ones. Considering you're relatively close to passing level 100 as well, they won't be very good value for money at the moment for you, so you may want to wait until you reach level 100 first, but that doesn't really help you with the Stryll Outposts.

Thank you for that info Matress_of_evil. It has highlighted some things I might need to look at. I currently have 3 reacters and 4 relays equiped this has been the same since I started playing. Unfortunately my funds do not allow me to continually change the setup of my ship so I try to build what I can around those, but it severely limits my deckspace I guess cripling my strength as I feel my research tree's are quite well advanced. I also have virtually none of those artifacts you mentioned unfortunately i'm not in a position to invest real money to aquire them, I guess i'm a bit stuck thier aswell .

All of the artifacts that I mentioned are available from artifact shipments. Some of them, especially Crimson Obelisks, are common to the extreme, (I had 25 of them in my cargo hold yesterday. I've used a few and scrapped a few, but i'm up to 15 of them again already) so you might want to look at your planets and make sure you're getting the most out of them.

First off, specialise your planets on the best resource production. If you have a planet with its' highest output in say mining, only build mining structures on it and forget the other production buildings. You can get a bit of output in the other areas from artifact buildings (Which you can also get from artifact shipments and certain NPC's), but specialising will overall greatly increase your production. Also, don't build weapons and defences on your planets unless you know an invasion is imminent. Instead, concentrate on building cloaking. Enemies can't invade your planet if they haven't scanned it, and cloaking makes it less likely someone else will scan your planet. Use a flux probe if you want to check how many other people have scanned a particular planet. It won't tell you who these people are (They could equally be friends/legion members as they could be enemies), but you know the planet is safe if no one else has scanned it. Population only acts as hit points for your planet during an invasion as well, so population structures are only useful during an attack - you'd be better off in the long run just building more cloaking to stop people finding the planet in the first place. Any space spent on weapons, defences, population, or cloaking is space that isn't producing minerals, artifacts, or research though.

Researching better buildings also helps. Researching cloaking gives you significantly better cloaking structures, and researching production buildings grants you access to buildings that are more space-efficient - so they produce more. The +8 and +10 buildings especially give you a massive increase over their predecessors, although I doubt you've got those yet at your level.

As for your lack of funds, start focusing on mining. At early levels, most people forget about mining because everything is soo cheap. But the costs soon start spiralling. Yesterday I had 5.5 BILLION credits, and I spent 4 Billion on new buildings. I'm already up to 2 Billion credits again. Get some mining planets, they really are worth it in the long run because stuff gets expensive.

Thanks again for the advice.

I think i'm getting the most from my planets, the issue being that more then half of them are Gas Giants, as such my research production is 5 times my artifact and mining, however I can only colonize what I find, and i've not had much luck, I refuse to colonise smallish planets even with great production, parhaps thats the wrong idea. I have researched upto +5 buildings but I haven't upgraded due to the lack of funds.

Wow, this got long fast. So, the thing has just armor, no shields? That's good, cause if you ask me, guns are actually more powerful when you get through the shields. The containment cage sounds good, and I like the being able to pwn foolish NPCs. Thanks for the advice.

Yes Fralo, it has just armor and no shields. I've killed four of them so far. At my strength I find them really easy to kill. Just follow my advice above if you have any trouble.

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Are you part of a legion, Ffliteg? If you are, ask people if they would be willing to share some mining planets with you. I'm a member of the Paladins of Galaxy legion, and one of our legion rules is to share any good planets. Most legions would be willing to share their planets with their members because that strengthens the legion as a whole. And if they don't want to share...consider joining a different legion. Also ask if any of your high-level (Level 160 or greater) legion friends if they have any spare Aidonium. That will certainly give your credit rating a boost.

You might also want to focus your research on getting some better scanners. If your research is high, it shouldn't take you too long. There are also artifact modules that boost your scanning from certain missions and NPC's, as well artifacts that do the same. Look out for Tachyon Cylinders (+50 Scan), Subspace Seekers (+150 Scan), and Stryll Seekers (+10% Scan).

If your scan chance of success is low, look out for Star Chart Purgers as well. These are relatively rare artifacts, but they will REMOVE a planet of your choice from your scans. (Hint: if you get one, use it on the worst planet you've scanned so far, especially if it has been colonised by another player) This will then increase your chances of finding a new planet.

As for your having Gas Giants, I wouldn't worry too much; there are artifacts that provide a permanent attack boost to Gas Giants and cost ZERO planet space. They can only be gotten from killing certain elite NPC's. Once you have some, if you haven't already followed my advice earlier about scrapping the existing weapons, then you definitely will be able to scrap the weapons with some of those artifacts set. There's a similar device for Volcanic Planets too, and again, it's an NPC-gained device.