you haven't done anything wrong, other than maybe scare everyone around your rank.

Nice job on the Insane rep. Your not doing anything wrong! It's what are they doing wrong.

Battles 4647 (Champion) (More than you)
Player Kills 292 (Less than you)
Deaths from Players 73 (More than you)
Non-Player Kills 130 (More than you. Good few elites.)
Planets Found 157
Planets Occupied 26
Planets Captured 12
Missions Completed 286
Scans Performed 229
Successful Hacks 72
Successful Raids 45

Lol at this.

Player Kills 366
Deaths from Players 43
Kills:Deaths Ratio: 8.5:1

Kills - Deaths Reputation
-50 or fewer Laughable
-40 or fewer Feeble
-30 or fewer Weak
-20 or fewer Passive
-19 to 10 Balanced
11 to 20 Harmful
21 to 40 Dangerous
41 to 80 Deadly
81 to 160 Menacing
161 to 320 Savage
321+ Insane

Your kills vs your deaths is what sets it.
If you had 325 kills and 20 deaths, you would be at savage.

Don't be fooled by the Combat Reputation.
There are some that just don't do PvP, and battle the NPCs
Those are deadlier with a Laughable rep more than the Insanes.

Also beware of hackers. they may appear to be weak, but they can be far more annoying than others because they'll just mine your research points.

Hackers can only hack once every 15mins (TMs are scarce at rank 45... they are coveted at 100...) so you don't have to worry too much about hackers. Your rep should scare them away. With only a 'Savage' rep I rarely get disabled, or even hit, despite running 5 cloak.

You do need to pay attention to Darious though. He makes an excellent point...

I TARGET people with savage reputations first, because they usually have minimal hack defence

I usually go for savage/deadly/dangerous, those sorts - they focus on too much on attack and not enough on scans/cloak. I usually leave insane alone because they've probably realised the importance of defence too (which a lot of the people who target me don't realise - I had 3 attacks while offline, and survived with over half my hull. I returned the favour, as it was a legion alert).

I carry 2 cannon, 1 defense. +4 dominions. Giving me 509 attack and 179 defense.

you're above average for your rank. If I were you, I'd get something like the Stryll transponder, just for easy scan and defence. Scan prevents hacks.

You realise each transponder would take me 3 weeks?

3 Weeks? They took me 1 week to get both, at rank 25. Without relays.
There again, I only hacked back then, so I wasn't blowing energy on PvP or PvE

Wow I finished it real easy. If you get 100 energy a day you really need to research new cores. ( Even if you slow rank invest in new cores and dont add them or add them without relays so you dont cap and can do missions more. )
I get around 936 energy a day. With relays

Energy recharges faster than 100/day. The base rate is 20/hour.
25*80 = 2000 energy/transponder.

2000/20 = 100 hours, which is just over 4 days each.
Install relays while you're online, and leveling and daily rewards, and you'll have enough energy in no time.

PvE isn't wasting energy, it's one of the best things in the game.

So... now that I have finished disruptor cannons and my attack is up to 583, should I go for Nanospheres, Microwarps, or Quantum Devastators?