Chapter 1:

Ever wondered how the most powerful players in Galaxy Legion became so? The answer my surprise you. It's not spending all of your money on energy refills (I've spent exactly $20, all on 1 planet), sitting for hours clicking away, or even getting really lucky on scans and junk. The real answer is: artifacts.
In the beginning, artifact seems like the most useless production stat. Research unlocks fancy new toys to go stompy-stomp on your enemies, whilke mining helps pay fo these tools. Artifact occasionally gives you buffs to make your guns hit a little harder, sometimes give you more health. So how can these things make you more powerful?

Well, like this:
Rescued Prisoners: Gives 3 rank points. The most important artifact in the game, IMO. That equals 3 more decks, 6 more atack,energy,defense or 9 more research points. The higher your artifact production, the easier it gets to pull in these artifacts. Note: do not spend aretifact points on decks, helmsmen, cargo or scientists. They're already covered.

Duratanium Brackets: Increases your hull by 10. 10 Hull mightn't seem that much. But, it constantly adds up. For instance, a friend of mine has 40k hull. 27k of that is from Duratanium brackts. All reearchable modules have their limits. To push past those limits, you need artifacts to upgrade your stats.

X-Charge Cells: Give 5 points of shields. Less than Duratanium Brackets, but don't forget, shileds recharge slowly and for free, giving you more chances of surviving when you are offline.

Android Scientist/Helmsmen: Give 4 more research/3 defence. This is why Rescued prisoners should be used on upping your attack and energy. Not only do Androids improve your stats, that increae your crew size, making raiding and counter-raiding much easier.

Ship-bots: Gives 2 more decks. Very useful, especially at low ranks. With a high enough artifact production, you can rely on bots to give you more decks, freeing up more rank points to use kn other things.

MSP's/Tesserract Containers: Give 60/10 cargo space. Useful early on when tyou can't hold everything in your cargo at once, they slowly lose their value. Note: Mass Storage Pods (MSP's) give more cargo than Tesseracts, but cost a LOT more (20k points).
Buffs: Things like Crimson Obelisks, Ancient Crytal Focii, Nanite Capsules and other ship buffs make your ship more powerful, but temporarily. Still, they are very useful.

There are more reasons why artifact is extremly important, but more on that later.

~Coming soon: NPC dropped-artifacts~

Hey let out his inner Oprah!


Looks good so far.
Turn it into a GL magazine.

You missed ship-bots.

-___-

Having said that it could be useful if a low ranker randomly found this topic, especially if it was stickied. That and it could be useful to show people the benefits of artifacts without having to explain yourself .

If you want to explain why artifacts are king you need to explain why research has a stopping point.

Anyone who starts this game will look at the next tier of weapons and say oh baby and laugh at another prisoner adding a paltry 6 attack.

Reread Duratanium Brackets. The stopping point of research will be included and emphasised in later issues.

though any person that does any sort of research about the research would know that research trees are finite and that if they power game that they could eventually finish the majority if not all ship research by around rank 400 give or take a play style.

:: edit ::

Also to point out that while a single prisoner artifact is only 6 attack, i routinly get 3 prisoners a day - not much from the perspective of higher ups but i love that number - so thats +18 attack per day / or +18 energy per day, doing math nets + 126 attack / energy / or mix there of per week.

at + 126 attack / week your looking at adding 1 disrupter cannon for free, no cost, no upkeep, no space.

in the course of a month thats 504 attack or 3 markIII DOM cannons + 1 markI DOM cannon without having to badge farm.

in terms of energy thats : 1 Mark 4 singularity core / week or 1 mark 4 proxy universe reacter / month.

This is for lower-ranked players. I'm trying to keep this at their level as much as possible. Working examples will be included from time to time, and maybe even the maths you provided

true sorry i lost scope, in a more relative term though:

1 prisoner a day = 6 attack [ or energy or mix ]
thats 42 attack / week or exactly 1 free light plasma cannon / week OR 1 mark1 quantum capaciter

Hi Blucifer! Long-time listener, first-time caller!

To reinforce this for all the readers out there - artifacts are king. High artifact production creates large, powerful, flexible ships. Using advice from this forum, I built a ship such that in 24 hours I ranked 15 times, and only stopped because I ran out of repair nanodrones and credits to fund the process (oh, and my wrist was tired ). I used no GP, no tris or cubes, and only 2 energy sacs.
The secret is artis. Enough rescued prisoners = high base energy (using the Blucifer-recommended 11x rank) from engineers, and I have started to add tactical officers to get my attack up. Ship-bots mean deck, and android helmsmen for defense. Android scientists for research, and tesseract containers and the occasional mass storage pod (if I am unlucky) for cargo. All my rank points from ranking go to engineers.
At rank 380 (up from 365 Friday Night) -
Deck - 2237
Cargo - 4280
Engineers - 2329
Tactical officers - 186 (just started adding these)
Helmsmen - 747

I also have 11 unused ship-bots waiting for a purpose.

It is all artis. And yes, my ship is weak for my rank. Speed ranking will do that to a man. In my quest for auto-rank, I was a bit of a GP warrior on energy refills to do missions (and buy the mission exotic and dyson). Now, though, I can rank basically when I want to, and got around half a dozen terraformers, and about 3-4 each toxic purifiers and data optimizers yesterday.

Ric Romero reporting!

@Derangeddm2 You have the right idea. Just yesterday, I finally succeeded in auto-ranking for the first time. I had that capacity for a couple weeks now, but I have been focussing on missions and my legion's base.

@Toastar Had to Google him. I loled.

Chapter 2: NPC Artifacts

NPC's(Non-Player Enemies) are those funky dudes and dudekoffs at the top of your battle tab. They are there to serve one purpose: be killed. But why we we do that? Because some of them drop shiny new toys, some unlock missions, and they are the best way of making it to the top of the rank leaderboards.

How to kill NPC's:
As a general rule of thumb, NPC's will be weaker than your ship. They start off more powerful, and grow more powerful as you rak. But, if you are playing right, you will get stronger too, and hopefully much faster.

Example #1:



And how do you outgrow NPC's? Artifacts. After many hours of testing and reconfiguring, many players of GL have gotten NPC hunting down to a tee.

What you need:

Around 11 times your rank in energy
Around 30 times your rank in attack
High hull and defence helps
At least 50 scan so rare NPC's spawn, though some need up to 2000. 600 is enough to find all but the rarest NPC's.

NPC's are the best way of achieving "auto-ranking", where you manage to rank up from using the energy from your last rank up. NPCing can give you roughly 4 xp/energy ratio. The less shots it takes to kill an NPC, the more xp it gives you for the energy spent. As the amount of xp needed to rank up is (your rank*40), this 4 xp ratio means you only need around 10 times your rank in energy.
Certain artifacts should always be used when NPCing. The list is extensive, but these are the basics: Crimson Obelisks, Ancient Crystal Fociis, Grid Consoles and Nueral Interfaces. All of these can be obtained from planet-production draws.
However, it doesn't work as smooth as that. Certain NPC's are tougher than others, sometimes requiring more than one player to kill. These NPC's can cause you to lose your 4 xp ratio, so having a bit of spare room in the form of a few thousand energy helps tonnes.

NPC's of Note:
The Good: the things you want spawning on your BT.

1. TO Troop Carriers: Very rare, usually around 1-in-500. The bread and butter of all NPCers. These bad boys drop Terraforming Devices (99% chance) and Quasi-Spacial Expanders (1%). *Note: QSE's are possibly the rarest thing in GL. Generally, they must be purchased from the GP store.
2. Rogue LabPods: Around 1-in-200. Drop Planet Data Optimisers.
3. Blade Harvesters: Around 1-in-200. Drop Toxic Purifiers.
4. Rogue Experimenters: Very rare, around 1-in-1000. Drops RSL Memory Implants.
5. Bosses and Elites: These range from 3-man enemies like Silithion Queens and Lazuli Fabrication Plants, to 10-15-man bosses like Silithion Hives and Sha'din Hypergrids. These drop a plethora of tools, and can be found here and here.
6. Caelon and the Hybrid Larvae: The rarest NPC's. Need 2000 scan or 1500 scan to find, respectively. They each unlock special, hidden missions.
Note: for the Hybrid Larvae to spawn, you need to have unlocked the "Controlling the Silithion" mission unlocked. The Silithion Chain is started with the mission "Aggressive Evolution", unlocked at rank 210.

The Bad: Those that hinder NPCing.

1. Stryll Assassins: Common. Your biggest obstacle, IMO. Not too difficult, except for the fact that the are very common. Drop 1 Dark Badge.
2. RSL RSL Siege Cannon: Uncommon, 1-in 300. Much easier than Stryll Assassins, also drop Dark Badges. Pack a fair punch, but poor defence and health make them easier to handle.
3. Stryll Trappers: Uncommon. Not very difficult to kill, however their Stryll Disruption debuff can make them more of a pain than other NPC's to kill.

The Ugly: The annoying ones.

1. Crimson Flamehawks: Common, begin spawning at rank 350. Not difficult, but poor xp returns make this a rightly disliked enemy. (Upgraded version of much easier Crimson Hawks, which start spawning around rank 140).
2. Lazuli Parts Runner: Only active during the mission " Suspicious Construction". High hull, high defence, low damage caps make this a right pan in the cannons.
3. Sha'din Shockfighter: Rare at low ranks. Drop Shockpulse Chargers. Similar health to Stryll Assassins, with a special debuff smilar to Stryll Trappers, these guys are pretty annoying, but their drops are very useful.

And now, for the drops!

Terraforming Device: Upgrades all of a planets resources by 1, up to a maximum of 15x Megarich. When 1 resource hits that limit, no more can be used. 10 Terraforming Devices are needed to complete 2The Terra Project" mission, which will be covered later.
Quasi-Spacial Expanders: Upgrades a planets size by 1 (6 more build space) up to Very Massive. Extremely rare, and equably valuable, it can take months to find just one of these. 10 are needed to complete "The Colossal Project", and each round of the Rift Project". (Surprise, all these missions are in a chain, and need to be completed in the order they are mentioned).
Planet Data Optimisers: Upgrades a planets research resource by 1, up to a maximum of 15x Megarich. Best used on VM Gases or Colossal Plasmas (but again, more of these later).
Toxic Purifiers: Upgrades a toxic planets mining by 2, up to a maximum of 16x Megarich.
RSL Memory Implants: Increase the amount of xp gained by a player by 10%.
Shockpulse Charger: Increases your NPC-attack by 20%.

~Next week: Planets~

Woah, everyone don't crowd at once!

A nice addendum to the npc list would be which mission npcs to get keep around for their xp value and which ones should be gotten rid of as soon as possible. Dark ISO runners, Rogue Data Analyzers, etc.

sorry Professor, too busy taking notes ...

Ugh, that would explain why I haven't found it this past month of looking. I feel like I'm going to cry...

this is pretty useful blue keep it up.

You dont need to complete it once. I found it without doing so. I have however started the mission (Spent 225 energy) and I am uncertain if that is a requirement or not. It possibly wasnt, but i chose not to risk it.

List Styll Assassins under Ugly. They give 10 xp return, whereas Flamehawks give 30. Switch em mate (: