I was wondering why people auto rank. Is it because they become impatient or is it easier to find rare npcs that drop artifacts such as a terraformer? Im not entirely sure of its benefit and i hope someone can help me out

Because they can and there isn't much else to do once they get to that level and finished all the missions they can

From what I know, it's usually recommended once you have most of the best modules installed, at which point it doesn't make too much of a difference what speed you rank at. Of course if you went normally you would have more time per rank to pull artifacts, but more ranks allows you more planets, and thus more artifact production (although colonization/invade costs get prohibitive).

So the amount of prisonners and ship bots eventually out weighs how much you spend on engineers as your artifact production grows?

I auto-rank just because it is fun.

What i get from doing it:
- more toxic purifiers than i care to use
- more data optimizers than i care to use
- steady supply of terraformers (1-2 a day when i npc)
- lots of elites which provide a steady supply of ctp for the legion
- all active members in my legion get the npc modules they need fairly quickly
- whenever someone is close to ranking and ooe, i can usually rank them up within 15 minutes by offering free rides on elites
- a significantly larger energy bar so the energy refills are that much better
- my high rank gets me left alone by most legions not in top 10

+a billion to all of these reasons.

I've autoranked 18 times in the past 2 days, picked up 10 terraformers, like 40 purifiers and sadly only 4 data optimizers, best part though is that because i've got an energy bar of just over 11x my rank, i can manage to do 4-5 rounds of the high energy cost missions each time i rank, so i'm getting both things done.

I don't consistently autorank though. Monday - Thursday i stick to dumping all my energy into high nrg missions, then Friday - Sunday its all about NPC'ing. By doing this, it allows me to get a generous amount of production increasing artifacts from NPC's, but at the same time gives me 4 days reprieve to maintain my 11x nrg to rank ratio.

what IS autorank?

being able to rank up then using that energy refill to rank again then that energy refill to rank again then that energy refill to rank again...you get the idea yeah ?

A better Q is why NOT to auto rank

If all the negatives of auto ranking no longer apply to you, there is no harm in it and u gain some(regardless how small) benefit in term of rank pt and research cap boost.

so if u r done with badges, not trying to stay low for certain npc etc... go for it

it takes a lot of time and resources to auto, i doubt many people would like to kill npcs for 2 hours straight

you also have to be in a proper legion that is able to clear the npcs fast enough otherwise you end up with 10 person elites sitting on your tab for 2 days

So getting more terraformers, purifiers and data optimizers alone is enough to convince me to autorank, but if you dont autorank do you get as much of these rather important artis? Im kinda reluctant to put rank points in something other than deck and tac officers lol

assuming u don't spend an excessive amount of energy on base battle, pvp(beyond regular set of dom reds~) and repeatable missions, you will likely end up doing about the same amount of NPCs by the time u reach say rank 600 regardless of if you are autoranking or not, thou one would reach the rank and therefore the amount of NPC faster.

on a side note, make sure u stop putting rank point in deck after u reach 1500-2000 deck or so, whichever you feel good about. and let ship bot take over. u will eventually have too much bots so no need to waste more pt on deck~

ok ill try that out once i reach that many deck

I think this is more what you were going for Mitch...

Didn't say i was special...


just answering the posters questions

I auto ranked because

It was the quickest way to add growth to my income . AP,RP and MP.

And with work and REAL life playing GL was getting hard. When i was able to sit and play GL I never had the NRG I needed , When i had work I all ways had tons of NRG but no time to play.

Having the auto rank option lets me play when I want to most of the time. I was growing agree with GL and FB games having to wait for every thing when I had time NOW and work later . Games needed to be played on my daily life and work around me like my PS3 games but GL and FB games with the way they are where not allowing that. I would not ignore my job/ friends and dumb waist of times that I enjoy to much , for the game but was not relay able to play with out doing so. My solution was to just get nuff nrg to play when ever I feel like it. Now GL is any other game I can play log on to when ever I want. With out missing out on important things. I some times lose a little AP, RP and MP at at this point I dont care Im happy with how it was worked out.

How much energy do i need to do this, i have a feeling its more than 10x the rank like everyone says

To autorank by killing NPCs, you need to have a 10xRank energy bar AND a 4.0 xp to energy ratio. The more energy you have, the lower your ratio can be and vice versa. There is a limit though to how high you can get your xp ratio because of damage cap and minimum shots to kill.

I think NPc can give more then 4.1 if u have a high atk, ATM I have 15k nrg at rank 1300 . so its a bit more then 10.1 and works well for an essay play when you want .