Ok so, id like some feedback on NPC hunting. Right now im rank 90 and i try to mix up pvp,mission,npcs all in my daily rounds, but id like to focus a bit more on farming Npc's.. I know that the goal is to kill them in less than 4 or 5 hits or something like that but how should transition myself into doing that? BTW I am up to the singularity range as far as weps go

you need 8 guns and 5 hull. everything else is optional. scan is good for finding rares, but other than 600 scan its not necessary. oh, and if you need to drop down a weapon tier to get all 8 cannons, its ok, you actuaclly get more attack.

Hmmm gotcha..ill give that a go and see what happens

In addition to Vekno's advice, I would suggest working on squeezing in some defense modules too. They will help lessen the damage you take, making your hull last longer. At your level, don't worry about your scan, at least for finding NPCs, none of them available yet have any cloak. As you level up, you'll want to gradually increase your scan to around 300. Which you will probably get just from NPC drops and mission Tier Rewards. You won't need 600 scan until you reach level 260 for a couple Bosses that are available at 250 and 260. Always remember to buff your attack and defense before you go on a hunt. Use Ancient Crystal Foci, Crimson Obelisks and Grid Consoles whenever possible. Sha'din Shockfighters can be pretty daunting at your level, but try to kill them when you can. They drop an NPC attack booster, +20% vs NPC for 1 hour. They really help when you can get one.

I don't think I'd advise NPC hunting as a good way to get Xp at your level. You might get some good rewards, but at your rank, you lack a lot of the modules and energy to be able to do it efficiently.

Ruairi is right. Work on missions. Get the modules and tier rewards. Better in the long run for you. NPC's won't get you anything useful really. Not at your level, and not for the trouble they will be.

Thank you for the tips guys

I second Darth's suggestion for defense. I just added 150 defense, which doesn't seem like a lot, but the damage I take per shot went down a lot - small investment can provide big gains, especially once hull repairs get pricy.

We have a player in our legion who's switching to NPC killing at rank 100. It's pretty early on but it's possible.

NPC killing needs a big ship and a big attack. As other people have said fill the ship with the biggest, best guns you can squeeze in and all 8. Hull is next to reduce time between repairs.

Defense is important at higher ranks because the repair costs get really expensive but it isn't really a problem till you install Intra-D colliders/Null rays. A few Dark Ring thrusters at rank 100 should be enough. Add a couple more defense units as you approach Rank 150 or more if you have space.

Scan is important though perhaps at rank 100 it may not be worth it. I have a big scanner installed to increase the chance of critical hits and block hacks. This means I can kill larger NPCs faster and sometimes take out NPCs in one less shot - even small ones - so get a better energy-XP ratio. I see a lot of lower rank NPC/PvP players without scanners and it makes sense with smaller ships where every bit of space is needed for weapons but after a while it becomes hard to increase attack without significant expenditure so scanners make a good option.

I'm flyng a heavy levianthan and my attacks about 3500, defense is about 3700 and scan is over 1000 without artifacts. Rank 266.

The advantage of NPC killing is finding the drops. Our rank 100+ NPC killer Phule, has had 2 terraformers already. He's also had a few toxic purifers. I have 2 15x minind very large toxic planets and am working on my next one.

NPC killing is partially about the drops and partially about ranking up faster. Pretty much all rank points need to go on ship size. Some missions are useful. The Zolazin chain gives more NPC slots -I've not yet completed this chain. IT means I can get 2 Dark Megacomplexes filling up my slots which is a real pain. Happened a few days ago.

The NPC I hope and dream about is the TO Troop Carrier. I'm after a Dyson terraformer. I've killed over 6000 NPCs but only found one quasi-spatial expander. I need ten of them! I have a feeling that the game mechanics set these to be available on certain days or at a higher probability during a certain time period. Not too sure about this but if players remember around xmas last year there were a lot more rare NPCs.

If you're interested in killing NPCs come join Coadym. We've got a good mix of players. We've got a few NPC killers so there's a few shared NPCs. They've got really useful drops for making a better ship. Having lots of NPC killers means we're a pretty strong legion. Just need a few more players and we'll be in the top 50.

I've got 1346 NPC kills at rank 131 right now and I've got 5 terraforming devices + 1 planet flux.
I made 2 toxic planets 5x mega rich.

Come join Coadym. We like NPC hunting and more NPC hunters in legion means more bosses and elites to kill

im rank 232 and dont have 8 guns i have alot of side stuff like vortal blast phaser,

oh and i found like 20 terraformers

I did NPC farming from 40 on and did quite well at it. The only things that matter are attack power and energy. 5 hulls are nice but don't sweat it if you don't have the room, you'll just spend a few more minutes waiting to repair wich is fine. You'll spend energy much faster than you'll need to repair I promise. Decks will be the most important thing you'll spend rank points on since you need room for all your guns and energy mods. Some points to buy engineers later on wont be a bad thing, but for now just focus on energy and gun research and having the deck space to equip all those mods.

I ran an experiment yesterday on a full energy bar, and with the new NPC added, my XP ratio dropped to about 3.46. Of course, this was all amped up with the lab created amp (which is not sustainable) at 13k attack total. I need about 3.3 ratio to rank, so I'm pushing a tight margin for autoranking now (well if I got or made room for energy modules, that's about 2k energy, but I'm purging with the first 2k energy and then taking them off). It takes me about 1.5-2.0 hrs to rank up spending 10k energy on NPCs and repairing every 5m. It yields something like 2-3 terraformers and data optimizers and 5 purifiers.

NPC don't bite back
You still need to "mix" it up to get bosses & rares for NPC battles & mission parts.

Just a follow up to his post about the xp ratio, we are assuming you are wanting to npc hunt in order to rank up. If that is the case then don't forget to use the neurals too. I would also say add scanning for the critical hits.

The scanning effect of "crits" is negligible if it even exists, I've run many experiments without scan and still get the same damage distribution -- if you can run under 50 scan you can avoid the irritating new NPC and increase your ratio. Using neurals doesn't work well because it only lasts 20 minutes, you won't get much done if you have to repair. They are better saved for missions where you can get the full effect. Even I can only get about 2k energy used under the effect of a neural, and I don't imagine most ppl are getting them as fast as I do or can dump that much energy.

pretty sure u dont... he said hes at Singularity weapons so lets say he has enough decks for 7 heavys:

Heavy Singularity Launcher x7
decks: 273
attack: 1449

best you can get 8 of with that many decks is:

Quantum Devastator x8
decks: 272
attack: 1272

thats 177 less attack. going the other way you could have:

Light Null Ray x6
decks: 270
attack: 1644