It has been asked SO many times. This time I want HIGH RANKERS OPINIONS ONLY. No sub 500 people that thing they know it. I want the high ranks giving me their knowledge and reasons, they regret their style, or not.

Now, I have mainly gone for the attack build, But I am not sure if going into engineers is right. Do you guys have your opinion on which is better?

Thanks,

Well what I did was I went heavy in engineers till I was around 10K energy. By that point I could auto rank on NPC's and didn't have to sit around and wait any more for energy between NPC hunts. I can just sit around all day long and kill them. Now I go more into tact officers. I am to the point where most of the chargers I hit while I'm buffed I kill in one hit. This help so much. I can kill the NPC's faster using even less energy, I can go through more NPC's in a shorter amount of time, and it helps with Base attacks and locking more alerts faster. (which over here if your slow on locking you miss out on a lot)

So really both have their ups and downs. I'm still going heavy into tact officers for now since I can still auto rank (my energy is now at 14K) But I may need to put some more into energy soon just so I can stay there. So its a balance process in the end and it depends which way you want to go.

This isn't easy to answer because it depends on where you are at in the game.

Early on I needed deck space bad because my artifact production was low so I used most of my skill points there because I wanted to be able to fit in all of the modules when I was able to.
It took awhile until I felt comfortable enough to switch to engineers and tactical officers.

If you're comfortable with the amount of deck space you have then I would split my points with engineers and tactical officers only.
One good thing about the game now is that you have the base to withdraw from. I would hope that you have some good artifact production in it so you get can more ship bots and rescued prisoners.

I'm rank 1044 and my energy is 8.8k but I need to have high attack power because I pvp a lot and it's nice to hit npc's with less hits.
It really boils down to how much your artifact production is. You can't throw all of your points into one thing if it's low because you need a balance until your artifact production get to about 15k to 20k an hour.


That's my two cents ....

I think this Question is highly dependent on your own playing style, and commitment to the game. I Chose energy and leveling to a point i didn't want to miss out certain NPC's on the same token i didn't want to fall behind and play the game only at certain times and sit and wait for energy all the time. As you get on you need to have similar firepower as people your own rank.

As you level and get higher production of things like artifacts you tend to get more ship upgrades and more items like rescued prisoners and with those you have some choices. Either way id say level-up rank points needs to go to energy your rescued prisoners can be used for a mix of energy and Tactical. this way you always stay close energy wise.

now just a short bit on player style which i mentioned at the top;

if you are a heavy PVP person then you going to want to put as much as you can into tactical naturally, but you still cant neglect energy still after you have put your min of 5 to 6 energy per level into energy you can then decide.

If you are into NPC's you going to want allot of energy to keep hitting them, again firepower is great, but you can use artifacts and special races, which help allot like "Drannik" for some time.

Then player type, if you are the type who pays for energy then really you can choose how you want to play, you still want higher energy to get more value for your buck, but the door is open to do whatever you like.

my personal play style relies on heavy energy for me 10k energy is nice.

That's my personal take.

My attack is high enough for the occasional PvP I do, so the focus is on more energy at this point.

My art has lagged since I've been playing, so I've tried to balance point distribution as it catches up. Closing in on 10k, at which time I'm hoping that I'll get enough decks from that to put points only into energy until it's high enough to throw in more tac officers.

The game really is artifact based. Wished I had paid more attention at orientation.

I would like to point out a few things. The general formula for matched npc's health is (some constant)*(square root (rank)) and the damage is 2.5*rank. The higher the rank the less of the max damage is needed to disable them in one hit. If you put mostly in TOs you will be able to hit max damage and reach the limit for one hitting npcs sooner, where as engineers allow you to keep hitting even if you are not hitting max damage but eventually kill them in one hit due to the exponential decay of number of hits needed to kill them. That is for npcs alone, that being said, you can conclude TO is more of an efficiency tactic and engineers are more of a drawn out method. Both will give the same results with npcs.

Other areas like planet invasions don't care about energy at all. It is solely about how much attack you have and the good grace of the RNG.

Bases require a combination of them. Say you are hitting for half of what mojo hits and have twice the energy, even though you both will do the same damage eventually he will win out since he does more damage per hit and recharge rate is fixed. Not to mention there is a time limit so he will have done more damage sooner and others will be hitting so you will be lower on the list lowering your chance of a successful raid.

IMHO I would say TOs is the way to go. Not saying Mojo's method doesn't work, it just for npcs it works better than the other areas. I agree with Mojo in that is a balancing act, there might be some golden ratio for TO: engineers, but as a lowly rank 300 something I am still working on finishing my research tree and getting enough decks to fit them all to figure it out.


Sorry I couldn't help myself.

Right now, I'm using my points strictly for tactical officers. Basically, I'm trying to get to the point where I can at least compete with certain people on Base battles. So far it's been working as I've gradually improved my spot in the standings (3 top tens in a row with this pack? not bad I think). That said, I do have a target in mind where I will start splitting my points. Early on in the game, I got a bunch of engineers so I've good a good start on those and will pass 4k quickly. I'm looking at doing 3T:2E (2T:1E). Drawing just 3 Rescued prisoners between rankups will allow for +18 attack and +10 energy. As primarily an NPC/base player, I'm fine with that for now. Artifact production is a priority for me though, so I can get more rescued prisoners (and the other good stuff of course).


EDIT: Been watching this thread develop, and I have to admit... I'm shocked that some know-it-all rank 120 hasn't amused us all with his insights....

I lean to the Mojo side of thing but a little more of the balanced thing.

I got to about 5k energy, 0 tactical officers, then went to mostly tactical officer but giving at least 1 energy per Rank up/prisoner/etc.

Once I got to about 3k tactical officers, I started to hit damage cap on a lot of stuff when fully buffed up so not I am most energy, still 1 TO per level up.

There is no right or wrong in what you do as long as all of your Rank Points go to Energy or Attack.

I basically did what Mojo's talking about. I'm rank 951 with maximum energy of 10554, so every time I level I put all 5 of those rank points into energy so I can keep autoranking, and then I put all Rescued Prisoner points into Officers. It's nice also because I always have some leftover to put into the Base, and if I don't have time to autorank I can still get plenty of missions done. Usually if I'm out of time for the day I'll dump energy into missions until I have 4energy/exp left to rank, and just by doing that I've already finish the holiday missions. I've been able to get over 100K NPC kills doing this, which has included 7 QSEs, a bunch of Terraforming Devices, 37 maxed out Toxics (and a few that I've lost, and a stockpile of Purifiers), and a bunch of Data Optimizers (I've maxed 9 Gases that I turned into Plasmas). Essentially, I just went for a little over 10energy/rank and then keep that up while putting more into attack. The amount of attacks I need for each NPC has steadily decreased and will continue to. I'm getting pretty close to taking Chargers out in 1 shot and have started taking out most Blade Harvesters, and a few Penetrators, in 2 hits.

I took the tactical officer path. Its true that at a certain point the diminishing return will be apparent but Im not after PVP. My goal is to be the heavy hitter on Bases. I have yet to do cap damage on base as of now. But i am almost there. Oh and High attack also helps with the Planetary invasion. Higher chance of getting that jewel of a planet.

I do like high energy too but most of my points go into tactical officers.

I now have 11k max nrg, after reaching this point I plan to get at least 15katk unbuffed at maybe 2ok atk then i will go back and get my nrg up to 13k or 15k. I think if you have a good balance you will be ok. I can auto rank off npc's and rank daily off missions so i like where im at.

nice, at what rank / deck space do you start putting more rank points into energy ?

Consensus is between 2500 and 3500 decks you should start using your rank points exclusively for energy or tactical officers (or a balance of both). This is dependent on your artifact production. Basically you have to look at whether or not your AP can produce sufficient numbers of Ship Bots to cover your deck needs as you grow your ship.

I got all my crew to 1k first. Now I'm focusing on decks. I just maxed out the defense research. 101 decks for the mods. Energy is need for missions, npc.

I'm 450+ so.

i ignored engineers for a long time , until about rank 150 or so when i really started getting into the game more
i always put at least 1 point from in engineers now when i rank up and at least 1 from rescued prisoners and such

it feels good having that extra bit of energy every time i rank up

after i get all the decks i need for everything , i will start putting more and more into engineers and the rest in tacticals ... after a certain point , maybe all of it into engineers

my ship isn't by far the best, but i can whoop some @ss when i need to lol

i'd say if you rank alot put a point into engineers every time, and higher attack is always a +

Energy is really nice you can't really say anything bad about energy. Everything we do in this game requires energy.

For me the downside of having too much energy is when you have lots of it but you forgot to increase your tactical officers. I believe I'm the only one right now that can 1shot kill chargers and runners and 2 shot kill tech collectors.

And although I don't pvp that much I have noticed that I can damage ships up to their damage caps. Drannik sabs are useless to me because most elite ships are already damage cap for me. I can deal 1200++ on xrp warp station which means I usually use less energy to kill npc and other ships.

The only downside that I have is that I need a refill to rankup if I'm doing weekly. Missions but damage wise I love my ship build. (The other way would be to npc untill I hit 2/3rds exprience bar and do the mission and then I don't have to refill

well I'm at the lower end of his scale at rank 561, but I'm pretty proud of my energy bar, which at 5690 is JUST over the 10energy/rank mark, I've been working towards THAT goal for at least 150 ranks, and now that I'm there, the ONLY rank points I'll put into energy now are the rank points I get from leveling, to keep the 10:1 ratio.
now every single other rank point, without exception, goes straight into tac. officers, since as of now I have a measly 450. but my reasoning is, I can get helmsman, scientists, and ship bots, but not a tactical android, so any extra rank points go into tactical; thing is, I have HORRIBLE AP/hr stats, under 3500/hr, which is why I'm tatherian, but despite this, I still get 3-12 points per day to put into attack(just before I started right I put in 8 points), it doesn't seem like much, but +10-20 attack every day over a course of a month when buffs are included can kick you're attack up 500-1000 depending on what you're hitting


so overall I'd say my ship is a little weak, though it is getting better, I just wish I had more tactical officers and AP/hr
I've focussed on getting a high max energy, and very high RP/hr and MP/hr, which some people would disagree with, but I'm in it for the team at this point (researching high end base stuff) the high energy is a god-send really, I come close to auto-ranking off of some missions(MISSIONS! lol) I'm at the point where if I incorrectly use an energy filler I'll end up with 4500 excess energy and only 200 ex. left to rank(which is really bad) so what's happened is that I HAVE to donate to the base in large sums so I don't waste energy, which is really nice for the base you know

I am Rank 886 if that qualifies as a high rank for this discussion. I was into an energy build until I ranked too quickly past my research by power leveling, focusing on NPC and doing missions. Now engineers are my lowest priority and tactical officers and helmsman are highest.

Energy deserves a mid-rank focus. At Low ranks decks are key and at higher ranks there are fewer badges to be had, NPC bosses to take down and missions to do for that energy to return as much benefit. Respect to the hardcore pvp and base killers they love and need their energy.

A balanced gamer will find that late slow ranking, focusing on artifact production, exceeding daily maintenance costs and doing PvP as the aggressor will extend the game playability beyond being an ultra high rank with few targets, only repeatable missions and lots of engineers to level yet again instead of giving a combat edge. Good luck.

Like a lot of people have said it depends on your play style.

I've found that I go through phases where I dump rank points into either engineers or TOs depending on game changes or need, with majority going into engineers.

I don't buy energy refills, so I find having a ton of engineers a God send. It's useful for contributing to our base and attacking other legion's bases. I've contributed over 2 million energy to our base and been top damager on several dozen base locks, and I still have over 50 energy cubes stocked up.

Btw, I've been dumping rank points into TO's recently and I have more than 11k. Seems like I've hit that point of diminishing return where adding more doesn't seem to help much.

I went for the high attack route, and only now am i starting to put in extra engineers as i go.

Currently have 6k+ tac officers, compared to a mere 1.6k engineers.

Flat out, with this system i level slowly. You have to be aware of that dis/advantage. I dont autorank, i dont speedlevel. If i want to level quickly, it takes me an energy cube each and every time, although doing so lets me add a few k energy to the base as well.

However, in my opinion it really pays off. At level 560+ i have almost a combined 50k resource production an hour, and 20k of that is artifacts. This is because I can take planets VERY easily. When a legionmate fails their invade and opens it up as ffa, very often i get it.

I have no doubt there are others at my level with higher production. They may have found multiple dysons, or have three rift worlds or something. Long-term higher energy is probably inevitably better, simply because you can level faster and colonise extra planets. But when you look at your attack score and compare it to the people you smash down, you get a warm glow every time.

And i love that.