I don't really see auto-ranking as a problem, but since we're looking for a solution-

Replace the Rescued Prisoners with 2 new arts-

Energy Crystals- Adds 2 energy to maximum capacity.
Android Tactical Officer- Adds 2 attack.

Make each of them drop ~ half as often as Rescued Prisoners does now.

Disclaimer- I only read through about the first 5 pages.

think it through lol, do you want people to have the exact same ships as each other? provide no means at all for people to customise their ships except say rank points? this would cement power to the higher ranks who have had longer with more rescued prisoners. Don't mean any hostility or disrespect but please think it through before hitting that submit button.

Yeah, thought about that a couple hours later. But let's be honest- ANY change that affects everybody equally will cement power to the highest ranks, and anything that scales up with rank will encourage the higher ranks to get bored and quit.

Alternate idea- Each time you level up, it reduces the amount of energy gained from leveling by 10% for 20 hours. This effect can be dispelled by using an energy cub, tri-matrix emblem, or paid energy refill (one effect dispelled per use).

Thats... not so bad I want to throw you in the fiery depths of a sun.

This would let npc autorankers get 2-3 levels a day with a bit of work without gp or recharges (but not 4+), let people rank up and continue smashing bases, and not screw with anyone but those who autolevel through the taltherian chain and such.

I do not think that we need to change the current level energy gain system, but if Dan had his heart set on this, something similar to this would work a lot better than some of the other suggestions.

We still need higher energy regen at high levels though.

No the solution to autoranking is already built in, more experience needed to rank. Pony has said it a few times already.

Let this die already.

Dan should event a recharge rate that is like 5% en per hour, what ever that is.

If auto ranking was impossible

1. NPC Legion Missions would be incapable of being finished without a lot of refills.
2. High-level (6+) Base attacks would be harder to set up and almost impossible to win.
3. The low energy refill rate of high-rank players would force us to take days to rank up.

...and I know a lot of us would quit. If playing the game became as hard as it was when I was between rank 250-300 (when I was vastly behind the energy/xp curve), I would completely quit the game. It's already a 30-minute exercise to auto-rank for me... killing npcs as fast as I can on 50mb/s internet.

So... change this, and I am out. The only "solution" that I might be willing to accept is to drastically increase energy recharge rates (such as the mentioned % recharge vs. 30-sec fixed)... but even then, if it's too time consuming, there will be even less I can do with my ship that I've spent a ton of time and money on. This is not a solution that will get people to buy more GP -- this will get them to quit playing.

My 2-cents.

I know not many (I can't either) players can auto-rank off of bases, but if energy refills were messed with, or xp ratios dropped again, I wouldn't be getting just over 1/2-way through a rank per refill (meaning that I have to refill once per rank on bases)... it would be something a lot worse and a lot more expensive. Setting up the base attack would be harder because I couldn't just rank whenever I wanted to.

I think there is only one who can do that. most of us just start adding T.O's after we can do it off NPCs.

What, you'd quit because you could only rank 2 or 3 times a day without using arts?

He said that, nowhere.

Also, don't necro threads without a good reason. Taking a stab at someone, is not a good reason.