I understand that NPC kills are a big part of many player's strategy. They provide experience and artifacts. Is there some sort of strategy/secret I don't know about?

I looked at that strategy, and concluded "WTF, how is this helpful?" I basically have to kill myself and drain all my energy over a few repair cycles to take them out. For some reason, the Zolazins were easy, but the other "balanced" enemies are nowhere near balanced.

If your weapons/defensive modules anrt up to par or better then your rank/NPC's rank then youll have difficulty defeating NPCs. At the same time however if you havnt invested enough into energy you may not have enough energy to go through enough NPCs for it to be productive.

Most players concentrate on energy too much. when your dealing with NPC's there is a need to balance your ship. When dealing with NPC the most important Stats are

Attack: more attack means that you do more damage per 5 energy that you spent
Defence: more defence mean less damage to your hull everytime you attack
Hull: having high hit points mean more turns to attack before you need to repair or wait 5 minutes to repair and be back on pounding NPC's

Of course you also need to have Energy and Shields. but at low levels (and not to high decks) you do not really need lots of energy to lock your self on NPC's

When I was level 130 i can kill an elite on my own. (of course I had 8 weapons, 8 defence modules and had to repair lots of times) but when your with a legion that helps you pound on the NPC it really helps.

If you can kill a Sha'din Charger (matched ranked NPC) with 2-3 hits then you know you have enough attack.. 4 hits + means you need to research more attack modules or dedicate more to your attack stats. (Well thats my basis for my game other people can say otherwise)

Also don't forget to use a lot of artifacts when fighting NPC's. Not so much on the NPC its self but on you. Raise your attack and defense as high as you can and if you have them use the two artifacts that raise your shield and hull up as well. It is harder for lower ranking players to hunt NPC's on a large scale because you don't have the space on your ship to put on all the models needed to kill the NPC's. Where as us high ranking players have all the room we need for all of our models to help give us the biggest, baddest, ship with need to kill them. I can kill about 40 or more NPC's in one like because I have good attack and defense to help me with it. For a low ranking player I would say if you want to kill NPC's join a nice sized legion of players around your rank so you will be able to see their NPC alerts. Other than that for fast ranking at a lower rank I would only go with PVP or missions. NPC is more for the higher ranking members to do hard core.

You can't kill anything in less than four hits. It's just game mechanics. And yes, Sha'din Chargers are the "norm". If you can kill it in four hits then you are just fine. If not, invest more in weapons. As far as my game experience goes (rank 113) I go with 8x weapons, 2x defense,2x hulls plus the random drops.

As far as I am concerned I would like to see some true randomness in the NPC spawns tho. I am getting sick and tired of the Stryll Trappers. You can't tell me that 2-3 per day in lieu of the other un-commons it's just fine. That game mechanics I would change. I know I sound like a broken record on all threads but seeing the same #&$# NPC with the same #&$# drop over and over again really drops my morale. : S

Yes you can kill a charger in two shots I do it all the time. But like you said 4 shots is good. If you can take one down in four shots at a smaller rank than you are doing fine.

I thought Dan clearly said that you can't kill anything in less than 4 shots. Thing is, I recently finished the Zolazin Battle mission and rank 10, 15 and and 30 kept spawning. Me at rank 100+. I had to hit them four times despite the fact that they have nil (comparing to my stats) defense, hp and shield. So what is bugged here ? Me having to hit them 4 times or you being able to kill stuff in 2 hits.

Edit:
Here is the thread where Dan is talking about minimum 4 hits. It's about PvP but I think it applies on for PvE as well. Or at least it did applied in my case. I'd really love some kind of clear answer on the matter.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31

The damage cap was changed since then. it now scales based on ship size. (so someone who won't properly defend themselves can still be shot down in less than 4 shots.)

Not only that but since the NPC's you where fighting where so small their ship size was also smaller as well. So the max damage you could do was only a small amount. Where as with me and the chargers since they are matched their deck space is also a lot higher. I have delt over 1K damage to them many times. About one out of every three hits I deal that much dmg. I also have really high attack when fighting NPC's so that makes a large diff as well. Some of the NPC's I can deal the max amount of dmg to and it will take me three or four hits depending on which they are. I don't think many players can do this but since I am one of the highest ranking players it is common for me to do this as I am sure it is for others on the leader board.

So you're saying that dealing with the chargers in 2 hits it's a distinct possibility then... I took for true the things Dan posted in that thread. "Four hits or more". Obviously I didn't noticed that someone raised that thread from the graveyard so I thought it's current news. Good to know. So I need to work some more on weapons. 10 energy for 40+ experience sure sounds awesome.