I was thinking of a new artifact named the Element Axe. you could get by 3000 Artifact points or 16 galaxy points. what it does is raises attack,defense,max energy,energy charge rate(by 10 seconds),max hull,max shield,shield charge rate(by 10 seconds)and Npc attack by 10% for 4 hours.

does it also attract females?

you forgot exp gain......and the kitchen sink lol

lets see
Lets all pretend i have 20000 AP/h
that means i get 1 every 4 ish hours (1 in 80k ap)
sooo i have almost permanaently 180 energy/hour. forget NPC attack or attack or whatever

You point is very valid. However I would LOVE 180 recharge rate! Lol, but I only have 1800 AP a hour and that is about 5X less than what my rank should have.

Or you could make them hard to get like Rescued Prisoners. I get about 2 or 3 rescued prisoners in every 78k AP and maybe 2 ship bots as well.