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 senatorhung's analysis: ULTIMATE PvP GUIDE 
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PREAMBLE:
#1 in raids, #5 in kills, #13 in hacks. i obviously love PvP in this game, so figured i would share some of my PvP tips.
(stat update 01sep2016 .. #1 in raids, #2 in kills, #4 in hacks)

WHY PVP:
for most players, PvP is about getting combat badges to use in purchasing Battle Market Artifacts, rank up allies, or to scan for bases. others seek to get the stats to move up the PvP leaderboards to earn PvP medals and get PvP Elite status. some players only PvP to retaliate for planet thefts, complete mission tasks, or to return PvP badge actions. a few just plain enjoy the competitive aspect of PvP that is missing from NPCs.

BADGING VS STATS:
PvP combat badges (other than planet thefts) are only awarded every 12 hours. any successful disable/raid/hack done less than 12 hours from the previous disable/raid/hack will still add to the successful raid/hack stats, but will not reward badges. if the target has no resources, a raid/hack will still reward a badge after 12 hours, but will not increase the successful raid/hack stats. players can ensure that sufficient resources are available for a successful raid/hack by using a Spy Probe - Resources before attempting their raid/hack.

BADGING EFFICIENCY:
there are 3 different ways to evaluate efficiency in collecting combat badges: time, energy, and xp. if you use de-buff artifacts, there are trade-offs between these efficiencies. using more de-buff artis will save you on the energy and xp costs of disables and failed hack attempts, but will result in fewer badges per day if you run into the offensive action count limit (100 per rolling 24 hour period or 125 if you have a maxed out Temporal Containment Shell). you can avoid the use of TMs by waiting the 15 minute increment between each hack or raid, but that would limit you to a maximum of 96 hacks/raids per 24 hours.

1. time efficiency - to collect combat badges in the shortest amount of play time
> leave badge comms to track previous badges to be able to collect new ones after 12 hours
> use Time Manipulators (TM) to decrease the time between raid and hack attempts from the 15 minute standard.
> use de-buff artifacts to weaken an enemy ship before disabling / raiding / hacking - however, most of these will add to your offensive action count, and a TM can not be used if the offensive action counter has reached your maximum (100 or 125) ... each individual offensive action expires 24 hours after the action is taken

2. energy efficiency - to collect combat badges with the least amount of energy expended
> use containment missiles, emp spheres, and disarming bombs to weaken an enemy ship before disabling (have to balance energy cost of using the emps and d.bombs versus the energy saved on disables)
> use quantum flares and positron clouders to weaken an enemy ship before hacking (trade-off between increased chance of success and the energy expended in failed attempts)
> avoid the energy cost of leaving badge comms by only scheduling a PvP run at least 12 hours after your previous PvP run

3. xp efficiency - to collect combat badges with the least amount of xp gained
> focus on hack and raid attempts which give zero xp, but require 5 energy per attempt
> match scans with a friendly ship of similar rank and simultaneously target the same ship
> target weaker ships to minimize the number of hits required and xp gained when attempting to collect red badges

TARGET SELECTION:
below rank 1000 or so, the biggest issue in target selection is maximizing efficiency. after rank 1000, the greater focus of target selection is maximizing the size of your target pool. your default badging range goes down to (your rank * 0.6) with no upper rank restriction. from the ships that fall into that rank range, your battle tab will be populated with ships that have less cloak than your ship has scan.

> tap EVERYONE on your battle tab. focus your attention on those to whom you are doing the most damage, relative to their rank and ship size (decks). focusing only on those with a laughable combat rep may cause you to miss out on some easy PvP targets. also, be sure NOT to click on the red x to exit from the ship targeting sub.window ... just click on the battle tab in the background and the sub.window will fade out. this prevents a forced refresh of your bt until you are ready to do it yourself.

> any ship attacked at least once will disappear from your battle tab (if you are in a legion) for a period of time, meaning that your bt will be filled up with 10 new ships that you have not recently attacked. however, eventually ships will start to re.appear on your battle tab. when that happens, you might want to stop tapping for a bit WITHOUT REFRESHING your battle tab. the battle tab only tends to require a hard refresh after 2 hours of inactivity, so you should have time to target a previously tapped ship once the halc expires, or successfully ice.fish a raid from a ship on your bt that has been dropped by another ship in the interim.

> if you start to see some ships re.appear during a PvP run, you can change up your bt pool by boosting your scan using Tachyon Cylinders, Subspace Seekers, and Contnuum Beacons and shuffling in other scan mods - your battle tab pool will now include some ships with higher cloak.

> ships that do a PvP action on your ship or your planets can be targeted for the next 48 hours from your news feed. click on the 'Battle Logs' tab to target these ships. if they have since been disabled by another ship, you can get "free" yellows and raids at the cost of 0 xp. also, for the first 24 hours, those ships are guaranteed not to have a halcyon trap.

> if you are running low on Null Fuses, you can use a Stryll Trap Probe to determine how many traps a target has in effect. 4 traps generally indicates the standard trap outlay of a KVT, omicron, halcyon trap, and QFT, meaning that you might burn off a null on a KVT and still not get the disable due to a follow.up halcyon trap. as well, you can burn another null off on the QFT and may be limited to only a single blue badge if the target does not have any research points on hand, so using a spy probe - resources avoids wasting the action count if you want the successful hacks stat incremented as well.

> the ships of those players appearing on the top10 kills leaderboard can be targeted by ANYONE in the game, from rank 1 trainees all the way to Shockwave13 at rank 6180. but remember that none of them got onto the kills leaderboard by playing pacifist ...

TIPS FOR PvP KILLS:
> any target with any stat higher than the standard 3/5/5 action count for disables, raids, and hacks can not apply a halcyon trap, so is a guaranteed disable if the target is offline, you have a null fuse to remove any krionite virus trap effect, and you have sufficient energy. you can check the target's effects tab and comm log to gauge recent activity.

> dropping a ship that is online and paying attention is often challenging, and sometimes your energy could be spent on easier targets, especially if the opponent decides to treadmill you (letting their shield run down and then firing off the occasional repair nanodrones to replenish their hull) instead of replacing KVTs. if you have been attacking a target for more than a couple minutes, check the effects tab on the ship for any very recent ship effect boosts (nanite swarm capsules, shield amplifier) to minimize the chance of being treadmilled. that said, you may be able to drop a weaker ship before they get the pop up notification of their trap being set off. scan blitz effects may also mean the target is busy on a scan run, so might not notice their hull going down in the background.

> at higher ranks, energy becomes a critical factor for PvP as ships gradually improve and require more effort to disable.

> if you are running *extremely* low on PvP targets, you can consider trying to get yourself alerted. some players randomly CM targets on their bt, multi.raid / multi.hack 'sensitive' players, throw artis at enemy planets to get on their logs, or start trash.talking on ship comms. of course, this only works if your ship is capable of handling the grief that will ensue ;)

TIPS FOR RAIDING:
> raiding tips on the wiki

> lower.ranked targets will likely increase your chance of raiding success due to crew differential (look for low.ranked Taltherians), but higher.ranked targets will tend to give greater raid rewards (based on rank)

TIPS FOR HACKING:
> boost your scan using Tachyon Cylinders, Subspace Seekers, and Contnuum Beacons and shuffling in scan mods to change which ships will appear in your pool of battle tab targets (will get ones with higher cloak).

> keep your cloak a bit higher than your scan to minimize failed crit.hacks

> look for an action count of 3/5/4 or a very recent badge comm which might indicate that the target has been recently hacked and may not have reset their QFT yet

> hack any halc'd targets that you can since you can 'bump' them from your battle tab for zero energy or xp (if you are in a legion)

> hacking higher.ranked ships will steal more research (based on rank)

> for balanced PvP, try to focus on disables when you have plenty of xp left before you rank up, and focus on hacking when you are getting close to ranking up

> if you are running low on null fuses, ease up on hacking, since you can get 2 badges (red and yellow) for each null fuse burnt on a KVT versus only the 1 blue badge for each null fuse spent clearing a QFT.

TIPS FOR DEFENDING vs PvP:
> if you are not going to PvP for a period, you can use Calming Amplifiers and Halcyon Traps to avoid being disabled and raided.

> running with 4 active traps will discourage some pilots who use a stryll trap probe, who will move on to another target with more likely prospects to collect a badge.

> emptying your research hourly when you are online will discourage some pilots who use a spy probe - resources to check before attempting a successful hack.

> boosting your cloak will make you harder to find on the battle tab, and boosting cloak and scan will require the potential hacker to have higher cloak before successfully hacking, and increases the chance that you will get a reverse hack if they fail in their attempt.

> you can burn off your attacker's null fuses by using Krionus Virus Traps and Quantum Firewall Traps.

> install 3 Gemini Cannons to force your attackers to repair more often, giving you a bit more time to notice that you are being attacked. having a full roster of traps on your ship also can help as it will give you more opportunities to notice the pop up messages if you are online. in that vein, to maximize the chance of spotting the notifications when you are online, have your shield and energy at maximum recharge, and place bids on the Galactic Trade Center as soon as previous ones expire.

> you can make your ship tougher to disable by aiming for a 100% damage cap rating build (a.k.a. SSB for ships at ranks below 750) and boosting your defense to minimize the damage taken according to the PvP Damage Cap Formula. aiming for a 100% damage cap rating at a lower rank will result in trade-offs in cloak and scan mods, so your choice will depend on which PvP attacks you wish to avoid the most. ideally, you want to plan to hit 100% damage cap rating when your ship is ready to PvP consistently.

> maximizing your hull to force your opponent to use more hits (at 5 energy per attack) to disable your ship.

OTHER PvP GUIDES:
19oct2014 - looking for PvP advice
ShadowsPoison (15aug2014) - PvP for dummies - with lots more analysis of how to interpret the data from stryll trap probes
best race/prof for PvP
Xzien (28mar2013) - PvP tips
24aug2012 - anti-PvP ship build
SpoonyJank (24sep2010) - outdated but a nice history lesson in how PvP was in the early days of GL

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Rank 3950 Litheor Governor 100% DCR r385-r2200 GL Marauder #26
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PvP leaderboards: 70212 raids: #1; 40852 kills: #1; 96377 hacks: #3;


Last edited by senatorhung on Thu Sep 01, 2016 11:11 am, edited 23 times in total.



Sun Apr 19, 2015 2:40 am
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A good tip for the higher rank PvPing. All things considered, when you are getting to be a decent sized ship your unbuffed hull will be about twice what your unbuffed shield is.

So if you are hitting a ship and it takes you 2 minutes to get through their shield, you can expect it to be about 4-5 minutes to get through their hull (no buffs or fixer or lazuli).
For above example I would stop at 6-7 minutes and assume I am being treadmilled.

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Sun Apr 19, 2015 2:55 am
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Tree7304 wrote:
A good tip for the higher rank PvPing. All things considered, when you are getting to be a decent sized ship your unbuffed hull will be about twice what your unbuffed shield is.

So if you are hitting a ship and it takes you 2 minutes to get through their shield, you can expect it to be about 4-5 minutes to get through their hull (no buffs or fixer or lazuli).
For above example I would stop at 6-7 minutes and assume I am being treadmilled.


Piggybanking off of your post - for lower ranked (600+) SSBs, it's about the same ratio (2 hull:1 shield). For larger ships in the same range, the ratio tends to be less than that (I think it's more like 1.7 hull:1 shield).

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Sun Apr 19, 2015 5:58 am
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There is a way to find weaker ships with lots of scans too. I'm not technically not an SSB any, but I tend hold large amounts of scan on my ship like continuum analyzers mk III on my ship and fight with almost nothing installed to hunt for big, fat, bubble ships that have modules making up most of their attack, defense and hull. However, the need for scans is not necessary because these type of easy ships are available with any scans, but there is a slight increase in finding bigger ships like these that are defenseless with absolutely no crew at all to back up their modules.

In my time playing Galaxy Legion, some ships are much stronger, even though they are massively bigger than mine, so those ships should be avoided because most of these ships are so heavy on crew that their size doesn't matter any more, unless you debuff them like some lunatic. If someone with more crew than you is on your battle tab, killing them would be mostly inefficient and a waste of energy.

To be strong in PvP, you must already be strong without modules and do not require the use of artifacts to win.

All their flashy modules are nice, but I'll come in and beat all naked any day, anytime.


Sun Apr 19, 2015 7:07 pm
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no one wants to dispute this guide ??

there's gotta be something that i've gotten off-base ...

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Mon Apr 27, 2015 4:29 pm
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Pretty exhaustive guide, Sen. I've quickly read through it a couple times and seems good to me -- Just assuming you know what you're doing when it comes to PvP, so not really looking for errors....LOL

About the only thing I'd say is that following some of your methods for arti use, and especially CM use, will likely result in some, shall we say, entertaining ship to ship comms :lol:


Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:31 pm
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Only way to avoid PVP is to be on 24/7. I have been disabled in a day after using Calming Amplifiers and Halcyon Traps. Someone running the BT will find you again.


Tue Apr 28, 2015 1:55 pm
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bumping in case anyone needs a refresher now that the lutuma chain is archived and hull testing has resumed ;)

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PvP leaderboards: 70212 raids: #1; 40852 kills: #1; 96377 hacks: #3;


Tue Sep 01, 2015 10:04 am
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senatorhung wrote:
1. time efficiency - to collect combat badges in the shortest amount of play time
> leave badge comms to track previous badges to be able to collect new ones after 12 hours


Personally, I think this was a great PVP guide. I just wish the dunces who block your comm for a simple badge tag would have read this before harassing folks about getting hit more than once in 12 hours....


Tue Sep 01, 2015 1:19 pm
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Chakotay wrote:
Only way to avoid PVP is to be on 24/7. I have been disabled in a day after using Calming Amplifiers and Halcyon Traps. Someone running the BT will find you again.


Actually, I believe there is a leaderboard ship who I think has found a loop hole in the game that has given them a way to avoid PVP attacks entirely when they're not online. It's just a theory. It's based on something most people could do early in the game (and can still do during certain seasonals), the fact that this ship is almost never find-able on the BT when not either fully pacified and trapped or online, and the Stephen King-esque question: "What if you had thought to keep your ship built a certain way instead of pursuing the ever increasing hull + shields build?" And, no, it's not me...LOL. I have way too many disables for that to be my play style....


Tue Sep 01, 2015 1:34 pm
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PurFikshun wrote:
Chakotay wrote:
Only way to avoid PVP is to be on 24/7. I have been disabled in a day after using Calming Amplifiers and Halcyon Traps. Someone running the BT will find you again.


Actually, I believe there is a leaderboard ship who I think has found a loop hole in the game that has given them a way to avoid PVP attacks entirely when they're not online. It's just a theory. It's based on something most people could do early in the game (and can still do during certain seasonals), the fact that this ship is almost never find-able on the BT when not either fully pacified and trapped or online, and the Stephen King-esque question: "What if you had thought to keep your ship built a certain way instead of pursuing the ever increasing hull + shields build?" And, no, it's not me...LOL. I have way too many disables for that to be my play style....


A calming amp plus halcyon trap provides a minimum of 6 hours of protection, and leaving yourself disabled provides unlimited protection.

When I was making my run for Insane status and was carefully minding how often I got disabled, I would usually PvP until I hit a stretch where I needed to avoid PvP (no null fuses, or legion mission requiring energy, or seasonal NPC hunt, etc.) and would leave myself disabled as often as possible whenever I found myself in such a state. When I knew my PvP time was going to take a hiatus, I'd usually stay disabled for 24 hours to hit the time when the calming amp and halc would work for me, and in the evenings would rely on the halcs rather than calming amps so I could turn on one just before going to bed. It was usually enough to keep me from getting disabled overnight.

Now I don't worry about it since I met my goal, but since I run a much higher cloak, am insane, and run a lot more defense so I cost more to disable despite my high damage cap, I tend to get disabled much less often in general than I used to anyway. I'm also invading almost every day at this point, so can never use the things anyhow, heheh. (Lots of ranks come from back-to-back npc hunt legion missions...got 6 or 7 empty planet slots most likely right now.)

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Tue Sep 01, 2015 2:13 pm
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Communication Breakdown asked:

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DEAR SENATORHUNG:
What is up with those weird badge comms ?? I'm BLOCKING you !!


some folks had complained that my badge comms of basic 'red / yellow / blue / disable / raid / hack' were just comm spam. that annoyed me. also, when everyone was posting the same things, that made it more difficult to see my own badge comm within the previous 12 hours. so i coded up badge comms for various scenarios, making them unique enough so that i can spot them amidst the badge comms of others, and copy-paste them into the target ship comm after badging.

now, i have had a standing policy for years of taking all of the hack and/or raid actions (as much as TM.timer allows) of anyone who:

1. blocks my badge comms

2. deletes my badge comms that are less than 12 hours old

3. is too low.ranked for me to badge (generally low-ranked multi.hackers looking for 'easy' research)

i still need thousands of hacks to catch the leaders on the hacks leaderboard. the only reason i hadn't been enforcing this as much was because i still needed plenty of yellows to build heist stations on all my planets. plus, i only got the temporal containment shell maxed out on the 28th of june.

to me, this is an obvious play. if i can't tell when i have last gotten a badge, when a target re.appears on my battle tab within 12 hours, i will be hitting them again, wasting a TM.action and NOT getting a badge. so if that is going to happen, i might as well take ALL the actions now, so that i can just bump them the next time they re.appear, and save the remainder of my TM.actions for real badge targets.

fundamental principles:
- badges are awarded every 12 hours
- if you have actions, they can be taken by anyone at any time for any reason, including multiples
- blocking badge comms hinders active PvP players from knowing when they have last received a badge

if you allow badge comms from my ship .. you get badged by me not more than every 12 hours (if i accidentally hit before then i generally apologize).

if you block badge comms from me .. i will take all the actions that i can. but, even if you do block my badge comms, you have a few options to avoid being multi.hacked by me:

1. (easiest) unblock comms from me (Dan added functionality to allow this) and i will return to badging you every 12 hours, leaving a pithy coded badge comm.

2. empty your research every hour as you get your shipment and i will take my empty blue.

3. alert me and feed my newsfeed with targets that are too slow to realize that i use my newsfeed as a handy.dandy target supply for further badges.

*NEW*4. if i have multi.hacked you .. you can now BLOCK me from any interaction. please remember that this will also remove me from YOUR target pool. this may also have consequences in terms of being able to alert for planet invasions.


Send your PvP questions to DEAR SENATOHUNG, c/o Great White North, Canada, H0H 0H0.
DEAR SENATORHUNG is NOT NOT NOT responsible for any hurt feelings that may be caused due to following any advice in this column.

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Rank 3950 Litheor Governor 100% DCR r385-r2200 GL Marauder #26
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PvP leaderboards: 70212 raids: #1; 40852 kills: #1; 96377 hacks: #3;


Last edited by senatorhung on Thu Sep 01, 2016 11:09 am, edited 9 times in total.



Mon Aug 15, 2016 3:23 am
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Pathetic PvPer asked:

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DEAR SENATORHUNG:
I was wondering if you could provide me some personalized advise to getting out of my predicament.

I am rank 984 Laughable with .188 KD Ratio
Decks: 6910
Attack: 14848 w/o stock cannons
Defense: 19511
Scan: 6118 w/o stock scanners
Cloak: 5783

Should I just say screw it or can I claw my way back to 1.0 KD Ratio

depends on what you are hoping to accomplish. can you get from Laughable to Insane status ? yes. is it worth the effort ? maybe. in order to boost your kill:death ratio .. you need to get massively more kills than deaths. the killing part is doable .. minimizing deaths is a bigger challenge.

part 1: the killing
at rank 984, you can badge down to rank 590, so yes, you can definitely find targets down there that you can buff up your attack to kill. also, don't forget to boost your scan to get even more targets when your initial pool begins to re.appear. you have 100 TM actions per day (assuming you don't have the temporal containment shell maxed out) for raids / hacks .. but your kills are never limited by your TM supply, only your null fuse supply. so use up your disarming bombs and emp spheres and containment missiles and go on a killing spree. of course, playing that way will most likely get you alerted so be prepared for that blowback.

part 2: the not dying (as much)
at 6910 decks .. your damage cap is 3455. no matter how much defense you stack up on that, you will still be a relatively easy kill compared to others in your rank range. even if you make it back up to insane, that will only deter those who do not bother to try to tap you off of their battle tab. when they see the first hit damage, they will still likely go for the kill.

an option might be to focus on boosting cloak as much as possible .. even to the extent of going zolazin spy during your recovery phase. that means you will only show up on the battle tabs of those who have sufficient scan to find you. i am currently rank 1596 (and can badge down to rank 958 so you are still in my bt pool) and run with 6390 scan. but i am a SSB, so there will be plenty of other larger ships in my rank range who will have more scan.

another option during certain seasonal events is to hit an NPC that will do massive damage to your ship before you log off. this is harder to do outside of those seasonals .. but if you know someone in another legion with a decent supply of gammacron traps .. we'll i'm sure you can negotiate some kind of payment for services rendered.

part 3: the 4-day shuffle
using an offensive arti or badging a ship puts you on a target's newsfeed for 2 days. you can be alerted by any of those targets anytime in the first 24 hours after that .. and will stay on the newsfeeds of everyone in the alerter's legion for 2 more days. so set up your PvP schedule accordingly.

DAY ONE: PvP rampage .. go as hard as you can .. 25 kills .. 50 kills .. 100 kills .. whatever your arti supply will support. keep in mind that the combat reputation doesn't care about badging ranges. also try to make any planet invasions on this day. if you can get disabled at the end of your PvP run .. awesome. you've just gotten 100 kills for 1 death.

DAY TWO: stay disabled. no halc traps or calming amps required. refrain from any response to multi.hacking or multi.raiding that takes place. replenish your supply of offensive artis and null fuses.

DAY THREE: if alerted .. you will still be on newsfeeds. but, you can repair if you want, if you are willing to do the halc trap / calming amp shuffle. continue to replenish your supply of offensive artis and null fuses. this is when you can do missions / bases.

DAY FOUR: you will have dropped off the newsfeed of everyone you badged in DAY ONE and every alert. so you can either repeat the cycle, making DAY FOUR your new DAY ONE, or you can extend DAY THREE as long as you need to. even if you die once in day 3 .. that is still 100 kills to 2 deaths.

repeat the cycle until you go insane.


Send your PvP questions to DEAR SENATOHUNG, c/o Great White North, Canada, H0H 0H0.
DEAR SENATORHUNG is NOT NOT NOT responsible for any hurt feelings that may be caused due to following any advice in this column.

_________________
Rank 3950 Litheor Governor 100% DCR r385-r2200 GL Marauder #26
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PvP leaderboards: 70212 raids: #1; 40852 kills: #1; 96377 hacks: #3;


Last edited by senatorhung on Wed Aug 24, 2016 11:39 am, edited 1 time in total.



Mon Aug 22, 2016 4:50 am
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Whatisthematrix> asked:

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DEAR SENATORHUNG,
do you think its acceptable to try hard for the 8k hacks badge and freeze rank at 50 ?

i generally do NOT recommend freezing since going that route means you are probably doing nothing else in the game. getting 8k hacks at rank 50 is not unique anymore anyway. i know of at least 3 players that have done that before.

there is a rank 47 flying out there with 27,000 hacks ... he / she will appear at the top of the hacks leaderboard at rank 50. meanwhile, their ship is getting pummelled by PA any time one of them can alert it and their ship is guaranteed to be taken out by Mama Topper and crew. so, they will graduate to rank 50 at the top of the hacks leaderboard, with laughable status, and the question then will be whether they still have motivation to continue playing. most of the other players that have appeared 'instantaneously' on the hacks leaderboard under rank 100 have generally gone inactive very soon after their accomplishment.

the only advantages of getting those hacks out of the way at a low rank is that you will rarely care about losing any planet to a crit.hack fail ... and getting all those blue badges early means you never need to hack again for blues for the rest of the game. that can make you more efficient with TMs for raids later on. however, i think that making hacking a part of your day2day PvP routine is more sensible since it forces you to pay attention to how your ship is balanced between scan and cloak. plus, there are a couple of other medals / missions dependent on hacking, so it's not like you would be done with hacking forever.

avoiding unnecessary or disadvantageous xp gains early on is sensible, but outright freezing has minimal benefits. avoiding hitting a base means you lose out on the crates, and there are many very juicy NPCs that give outstanding amounts of ctp (relatively) at early ranks, that higher ranks will never see again. plus, at such a low rank, your artifact production is generally extremely low, and your ongoing ship strength build up will be hampered.

pretty much the only time i can wholeheartedly recommend freeze ranking is when you are trying to get your deck damage cap to align better with your rank damage cap. but even that isn't too sensible unless you've crossed the rank 600 threshold (after losing the majority of the primo ctp-dropping NPCs), have built up a decent amount of artifact production, and have energy to burn on hacking and ice.fish raiding for hours on end. freezing exceptions would have to be made for legion missions, bases, and quality NPCs (fab plants, queens, command nexus, hypergrids).


Send your PvP questions to DEAR SENATOHUNG, c/o Great White North, Canada, H0H 0H0.
DEAR SENATORHUNG is NOT NOT NOT responsible for any hurt feelings that may be caused due to following any advice in this column.

_________________
Rank 3950 Litheor Governor 100% DCR r385-r2200 GL Marauder #26
_____________Image
PvP leaderboards: 70212 raids: #1; 40852 kills: #1; 96377 hacks: #3;


Wed Aug 24, 2016 11:35 am
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edited my post of 14aug2016 to incorporate the new blocking feature.

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Thu Sep 01, 2016 11:09 am
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rank 606 eeeriefelon lobbed this bomb on my comm:

Quote:
I was planning to take that planet when my invade time went down and you temp fluxed it. I think it is a great planet but you should probably replace some of those artifacts. 275 is weak .. raise your standards !! 300 plus is average. i could get 315 production off of it without nonrepeatable artis. you wasted a flux.

1. 'wasting' a flux

a temporal flux orb costs me: 2500 xp and 6250 exotic matter (i neglect energy cost because i have a scrooge-sized energy pool). i usually do the mission once every rankup (did it twice during the qpedd seasonal due to all the extra scanning going on). i flux probe twice a week and temporal.flux any planets that are not already slated for abandonment (currently at 238.7 arti per hour).

Meredmina Massive Gaia planet production was:
Quote:
Mining Ultra Rich 66 units/hr
Artifact Mega Rich 275.4 units/hr
Research Rich 44 units/hr

now, for a rank 606 with 153 planets, invasion cost is 7 billion credits.
my current invasion cost for rank 1731 with 426 planets is 154.6 billion credits.

so the tradeoff is burning 2500 xp and a few hour's worth of EM is worth keeping 275 arti per hour in my hands, versus 155 billion to just replace that lost production. i would rather spend that 155 billion on a new production planet or taking a planet and stripping decent artis off of it. so anything over 250 arti per hour (for now) is an automatic temporal.flux, even though i would not consider invading a planet that would net me less than 300 arti per hour (other than for arti extraction purposes).

2. planet production vs planet protection

Quote:
Passive Defense 400
Passive Cloak 100

1140 / 1140 Population
Planet Guards Legion Bonus Total
Defenses: 6739 0 120% 14826
Attack: 2145 0 120% 4719
Cloak: 1200 0 120% 2640

Hypergate Mining: 2, Research: 2, Artifact: 2
Galactic Concord Station II Mining: 2, Artifact: 2, Defense: 20%
Adumbrate Station Research: 1, Artifact: 1, Cloak: 200
Adumbrate Station Research: 1, Artifact: 1, Cloak: 200
Isolation Bureau Mining: 2, Research: 2, Artifact: 2, Cloak: 400
Toxic Processing Plant Mining: 3, Artifact: 2, Attack: 30%
Barrier Nexus Artifact: 1, Defense: 300, Defense: 20%
Barrier Nexus Artifact: 1, Defense: 300, Defense: 20%
Space Elevator Artifact: 1, Population: 50
Space Elevator Artifact: 1, Population: 50
Relay Tower Research: 1, Artifact: 1
Processing Core Mining: 1, Artifact: 1
Heist Dispatch Station Mining: 2, Artifact: 2, Attack: 300, Attack: 10%
HyperSensor Satellite Research: 2, Artifact: 2
Bainar Access A-Node - Basic Artifact: 1
Hyperforge Fabricator Artifact: 12
Hyperforge Fabricator Artifact: 12
Polychoron Vault Mining Storage: 1000, Artifact Storage: 1000, Research Storage: 1000
Domain Walker Attack: 600, Defense: 600
Domain Walker Attack: 600, Defense: 600
Obviation Barrier Defense: 1200
Astrobiology Ward Population: 500, B Population: 50%
Silthion Gas Vesicle Research: 2, Cloak: 150
Dark Anti-Beacon Defense: 500, Cloak: 150

so, by trashing everything after the polychoron vault, i could get 2 extra arti from the 7 space. (i could try to trash for 11 more space to get 10 more production .. but that is a wash since i would lose the 10 1:1 artis trashed plus polychoron) i went ahead and did that (since they are all readily replaceable). here is the result:

Quote:
Mining Ultra Rich 66 units/hr
Artifact Mega Rich 287.64 units/hr
Research Rich 36 units/hr

Passive Defense 400
Passive Cloak 100

260 / 260 Population
Planet Guards Legion Bonus Total
Defenses: 1728 0 120% 3802
Attack: 429 0 120% 944
Cloak: 900 0 120% 1980

an extra 12.24 arti per hour in exchange for 11k defense .. 3775 attack .. 660 cloak and 880 population (44 hits).

now whether that trade.off is worthwhile to someone depends on their current situation. in my case, the extra 12.24 arti per hour is NOT worthwhile. i had 201.7 arti per hour at last rankup, capping in 7.19 hours. even if i made this trade.off on 100 planets .. that would only net me 1200 arti per hour .. or 0.59% of my hourly production. the benefit is that a random low.rank is less likely to scan or take the planet. no one over rank 1k will even bother with it other than to alert to a lower.rank legion member.

for someone at rank 600, making the planet run at 300 (though i don't see any other repeatable artis that would get it there other than stuff like vortov which i still haven't run out of better planets to use on) pure production may be worthwhile. but to me, that is an even worse proposition. the 300 is a higher % of overall production .. and with 0 defense .. any high.rank that scans it will alert it to the low rank who will have no difficulty taking it. yes, you can 'easily' replace it for 7 billion credits for another invasion, but that is always at the expense of invading a new planet for additional production.

so the 2 philosophies at work, since your lesser planets WILL be scanned / hacked ... you can either probe and temporal flux regularly and use some defenses to keep what you already have (temporal fluxing also ensures that the planet can't be crit.hacked from the database of the other scanner) ... versus pure production and replace when lost.

3. planet invasion pickiness

the more interesting dynamic to me is how picky you are with the planets you invade.

(pardon the minor digression, but i am curious ...
Quote:
Planets Occupied 426
Planets Captured 990

who am i competing with for the most planets captured ? i thought Mama Topper was ahead of me, but it looks like i surpassed her 828 already ... out of the top 10 killers, CapitainePaul has 1009 planets captured, but has 112 more playing days than i do ...)

so, obviously i am of the "invade every day" persuasion. others like Maelstrom are in the "invade only the best" category. my way maximizes total production (and green badges !) by minimizing open planet slots (at the expense of higher invasion costs and GP costs for abandonments). the other end of the continuum maximizes total production by having much higher arti per planet (at the expense of potentially having nothing worth invading after multiple scan runs, and not having enough storage planets to make the most of the extra production).

the other facet is that since i mostly invade arti.focused planets, i have had little need for the taltherian race and that will likely be the last race that i finish for the medal (once i am well past rank 2200, or even the rank 3618 sillixx missions 1, 2, 3).


Send your PvP questions to DEAR SENATOHUNG, c/o Great White North, Canada, H0H 0H0.
DEAR SENATORHUNG is NOT NOT NOT responsible for any hurt feelings that may be caused due to following any advice in this column.

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Last edited by senatorhung on Mon Feb 20, 2017 4:59 am, edited 3 times in total.



Mon Feb 20, 2017 4:36 am
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Icarium had about 1200 invades last I saw his stats but as far as I know I am in second place.

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Mon Feb 20, 2017 4:51 am
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CapitainePaul wrote:
Icarium had about 1200 invades last I saw his stats but as far as I know I am in second place.

icky had 1116 as of 08feb .. just checked the fan forum.

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Mon Feb 20, 2017 5:06 am
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