I am not getting any good artifacts from draws anymore. Haven't gotten any planet fluxes, no terra formers, no ice melters, nothing in at least a month. There aren't enough rare NPCs to make up for what I used to see in artifact draws so the only way to get a decent supply of good items is to buy them.

Below is my inventory after I went through and scrapped hundreds of items. I have more than I could possibly use of the crap. What is the point in having more than a 100 planet traps if you don't have that many planets worth protecting?

[quote="Kaos"]Below is my inventory after I went through and scrapped hundreds of items./quote]
Is the fact you have nothing under it meaning you have not artifacts left? Or your just gonna post the list later?

I had them posted but it made my post ridiculously long. They were all traps and planet artifacts. 53 grav whip traps, 68 cloning pods, 48 ion storm charges. 76 crimson obelisks, 28 refining lab chassis, 82 quantum flares and a whole lot more. I draw 6000 artifacts an hour and can't get anything worth using.

Other games I have played on here, when they changed it so you could not longer get the good stuff from playing, its because they started making people pay more. Is that the plan here? Is it just to get people to buy them because they can't get them the regular way?

YES, that is always the plan.

Judging from the chances I saw from the beginning of me playing, It was definately because it was too powerful for it's rarity back then. It's supposed to be rare, because it definately is that powerful. Judging from what I've heard, Dan doesn't need more cash because he already gets enough from the hundreds of CCers already.

i am thinking that this is a way of encouraging the use of legions to make up the difference, and to increase PVPing via conflict over planets.

Can still get a lot of "the good stuff" just from npc now.
problem with pvp and legions is there is no incentive to put my planets at risk to help a legion member defend theirs..

Supposed to be rare how ? I mean, there is a fixed price right ? Why give it a price if the chances of getting any artifact aren't equal ?
Is the artifact too powerful ? Fine, boost its price to oblivion. That thing with price + rarity sounds like double taxation to me. Sucks the socks.

Having a higher artifact price on something just limits it to a slightly higher level. You can turn in at a very high point value nearly as often as a low one because there aren't very many high value (in AP) artifacts. If you happen to not be able to turn in as often, you are probably lucky anyways. I have 3037 AP an hour and I doubt anything new would suck or take a lot of hours to make up for compared to what it is worth in game terms. It is odd though that once you get more than a few of the high value items, that there isn't much reason to get more than 6k artifact points saved up, even at higher levels.

I'd rather pull out some of them from the draw table, honestly. 2100 AP for a stupid "Unstable Wormhole Emitter" , 3 times in a row mind you, at my level, it's just plain awful. I'm probably paying for my future sins. :S

Just make sure it isn't wasted then

LOL that's an interesting perspective!

well... yea. the only incentive in Artifact Draws right now are the rescued prisoners, ship bots helmsmen and scientists.

but terraformers, and expanders and fluxes are nessecary to normal gameplay too....

if you can't protect the planets you used an ice melter on, then whats the point of using it? its at a point like that, that a flux is useful.

but before the drop rate was insane..... id have 8 fluxes a week on 1600 ap/hour. terraformers i got 8 of since i started playing... that drop rate was fair. expanders i got 1 of.

since the change i have seen none, not from Artifact Draws, Not from NPC's and beleive me, me and my legion kills a LOT of npcs.

two of those artifacts are needed for quests. 1 is needed for a very basic and important defense....

im fine with the drop rate being lowered from what it was originally but now its basically nonexistant.

perhaps a slight change is in order so that these quests might be completed at some point? and the important planets be defended? but not enough to flood us with them and make them trivial.... perhaps put them on a timer. to not drop more than once every week? and even then only a .5% chance?

that way its something to look forward to, and a reason to cash in constantly. the incentive is still there to buy it too. some people might not wanna wait 10-20 weeks to finish their expander or terraformer missions.

With the drop rates being so ridiculously low the missions might as well get pulled out. They're worth doing, but if you can never get the artifacts required to do them they just sit in your mission log forever.

Well, I got my first terraformer the other day since the nerf. And I only had to kill 3000 npcs to get it.

Still no planet fluxes, terraformer, or ice melters from the artifact draws. I guess I need to bump up my AP per hour. It's only at 6900.

Well from a business perspective if they were easy to draw you wouldn't have to buy them lol. I get rescued prisoners often enough to be ok with it, that's the only thing I want anyway. The bot crews seem to be pretty rare. But yeah, you roll mostly crap that's just how it is.

I'm rank 181 with 1292 decks, you do the math. Research returns are the inverse of exponential. Being artifact heavy is more of a long term strategy and generally more fun anyways. There are a myriad of things that artifacts do for you. None of them are bad for you. Clear your star charts for free... my god that is just monumental compared to how some conventional people play this game, and that is a tiny tiny aspect of it. I have 600 extra hull, 300 extra shields, 400 extra crew. Those crew actually have a function too.

Oh I don't disagree really, since I switched from RP to AP heavy, I've grown faster. Once you get to mid tech the marginal gains per time start to decline (also, I went Vygoid->Human for the XP bonus since I kept maxing out RP overnight, but at some point might go back to Vygoid/Excavator to get RP/AP both boosted when leveling slows more, since if I'm maxing I can then swap from RP->AP on some planets, AP takes longer to max). But, the gain from AP is always linear in proportion to the chance of rolling permanent ship-boosting artifacts; faster than leveling at some point (not yet for me but I also have 300 engineers so I level a bit faster permanently through cube/leveling boost to energy, faster than most of my peers).

What I am saying is from a ship development perspective, the odds of rolling a permanent artifact are much lower than a temporary one (not unexpected really), ie "mostly crap", not that they are all useless but when that's what I am trying to roll... I am curious - I seem to roll permanent boosts more often (like prisoners) when I start from a high AP point; theoretically if I roll when I hit 4000 AP it should be same odds as say rolling from 20,000 AP but my experience is that I have better odds at mid level artifacts when my total AP is higher when I roll. Anyone experience this ?

probes probes probes nuthin but probes

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2479

As much as I like those Star Chart purgers myself, that's not a good one to overdo. It's a good idea to keep some 'static' of junk planets in case you eat a critical database hack and someone gets to peek at your charts.