okay like a previous post weeks ago, i was doing another npc rampage. Guys the npc generator is totally being jerkish to me! i used up WAY over 1.6k energy (1k+ energy from rank up) disabling practically USELESS npcs. Out of GOD KNOWS how many npcs, i only ran into one rare enemy. And guess what?! IT WAS A SERIOUSLY USELESS ELITE NPC (LAZULI FACTORY COMPLEX) THAT I ALREADY SLAUGHTERED YESTERDAY!!! Dan, SERIOUSLY, make better npcs appear to me alright? Plz don't make the generator such a JERK!!!

Lol.... Trust me, Lazuli Factories are NOT useless. Their drop is a very valuable passive boost for your planets. Kill them when you find them. Also, make sure you alert them to your legion and let 2 other people get a drop as well. This type of enemy is not intended to be fought by one person alone.

darth i personally don't have much of ANY volcanic planets that are mines. and plus whatever volcanics i have never get attacked so WHAT'S THE POINT?!

the point is...
eventually u will...


and seriously, 1600 isn't much of an rampage... that's what? 80 NPC tops? probably 30-40?

uh no i won't since i mainly go for research as my main resource

Maybe NOW you don't, but who knows what you'll end up with down the road. Once your legion discovers the Thermionic Whozywhatsis in the CT Lab, you'll be able to turn a volcanic into a Demon planet and if you happen to improve the volcanic before transformation, it WILL become a target for invasion. Any passive bonus you can add to a planet is a good thing. Trust in the advice of an experienced player, a lot of us actually do care about how the "little guys" are doing. We don't want to see you all make the same mistakes we made when we were little guys.

You may be focusing on research right now, but you will need mining production to pay for the technology you gain.

uh say what?

Exactly... lol... There's just so much that low ranks/new players don't know/understand because they haven't seen it yet. This is why us experienced players try to help and guide the newer players. Just trust us, we're not out to screw you over.

The upkeep becomes tremendously expensive.

why does everyone whos new to the game thinks that research is the way to go.

Because when you are new it is the most important.

I learned this the hard way... Even at low ranks Artifact should be your primary concern. Higher artifact production=more Android Scientists=more research to counter a lack of research planets. You also get plenty of other goodies that counter lack of researched tech. Android Helmsmen help your defense. Rescued Prisoners grant Rank Points that can be used to add Tactical Officers and Engineers. Ship bots give you deck space.

There's a reason you only get 500 points toward your capacity for research and minerals and 1000 towards artifacts per planet/rank. Because artifact production is THE most important.

I partly agree with him, ive spent about 1.3k energy on NPCs straight and 90% of them were Dark Velocitors, Dark Warpers and sha'din raptors. the 10% was rogue tech collectors... hate them.

when i was new to the game i started with artifacts right away. research was only 2nd priority. And it paid off really good

Chassis baby Chassis.

When your new your buildings are 1 resource per 1 planet space. when you have the necessary artifact per hour you gain an advantage.

All I wanted to get from artifact draw was a planet flux, terraforming device and a surface melter. but by the time i got to to 5000 artifact per hour. Dan removed those artifacts from the pool.

Well IMO...

refinery drops are pretty useless at some point. I have all the ones I collected up to rank 600, which is about 80 of each and I think I scrapped a bunch. But this is because I cloak everything that I care about with full passive and 2 max cloaks, totaling about 10k cloak.

I've also got > 100 pillars and defense drops, which work on any planet and are far better. I will never use a volcanic or a demon, only toxics for mining, so one of them is useless. Gas, I could use the igniter rods but as before, I am cloaking not going attack/def/pop route. So while it's pretty easy for me to make a few 6k/6k planets , I would still rather just go pure cloak instead. I just upgrade those for other people that do like att/def.

The fabrication cloak drop is the most useful. Get as many as possible.

btw, RP was the most useful marginal gain in the beginning not AP. On a point for point basis, and for the fact RP is more commonly obtained, you get more overall development from RP than AP. AP is a higher level resource, and the android to RP argument isn't very strong because it takes about 19k AP to get 1 RP from androids, on average, which is really not much. For first time players Vygoid is probably the easiest.

At very low rank(100 or below, or 50- at least if u r slow ranker) research is better
because u need scan(unless u r in a legion that is abundent with awesome planets) and the resource strucutre
a bit of quick research will allow u get more artifact quickly.
so pre-100 I would advice on research seeking, but u can pretty much put a halt on that after 100, unless u find some uber amazing research planet(compared to ur artifact options)

oh believe me guys i already have a tremendous artifact output so it ain't exactly priority for me to do so.

I suspect either a troll or just anger management. Mario, just keep at it, if you're not killing a thousand NPCs a day, you're not really "rampaging". Also, unless your Artifact output isn't above 20k, you don't have a "tremendous" amount and you need more (over the longterm, don't know what your rank is). If you're above rank 100, you shouldn't be looking for research heavy planets anymore.

I did 6.5k energy all on NPCs from my first level up today. 0 shared elites. 1 TO Troop Carrier and one Dark Arms Carrier. Dark Arms Carriers aren't my favourite since I've not had a flux from them in ages.

6.5k from my next level up got me a bunch of shared elites and no unshared ones.

NPC hunting is a numbers game. It's not like missions where you can guarantte what's going to happen. There are some days I get nothing from an hour's NPCing and some where I'll get 2 TO Troop Carriers and a bunch of other elites. It's something you get used to. I've got 3 Rogue Experiments or 3 Drannik Ballistaes in a few days as well.

btw - totally agree with binaryman on the AP versus RP thing at lower ranks. I've been Vygoid for almost 500 ranks. It was amazing in the early stages because I could skip through research much quicker to get better resource production structures, scanners and all the rest. In fact Kronyn is probably better.

At high ranks though AP is so important. Just look at the Dysonians. Loads of them are Tatherian. So are lots of other high rank players.

+1 i agree