Ask your legion for planets, I'm sure they'll be willing to help you out.

What i suggest.

Focus all research on planet construction until you finish +5 buildings.

Rank to 19 and freeze--if your a slow ranker.

If your PvP attack oriented research : hull, weapons, sensors ( in no particular order )
If your PvP hack oriented research : hull, defense, cloak, sensors ( in no particular order )

Skip DOM 2 cannons, unless attacking is the only thing your interested in.
The quad frames are totally worth it

In a good legion you should be able to get a fair amount of decent planets from legion mates, and you should be in good hands there.

good advice, im rank 25 now have over 1k hull, 200+ engineers and tactical officers

What do you mean, rank to 19 and freeze?


and thanks for the advice on the research spending. I've been doing pretty well getting my red badges (and the occasional yellow).

Freeze = do things that don't yield experience points so you don't rank up (e.g. hacking and raiding). By waiting like that, you can accumulate ship-strengthening artifacts to make you much stronger than others around your rank

Got it. The slow ranking method.

Reason i said 19 is because sub level 20 ypur planets are "immune" to invasion so if you have good planets, you can use rank 19 as a ploy.

^ they're only immune for 2 weeks, though that should be plenty of time to grab artis if you're in an artifact-based legion

I am in an artifact legion.


I have a question about the planet population. What is the benefit of purchasing habitation modules? How does having a higher pop. benefit a planet? I assume it does or else there wouldn't be the option to increase the pop.

A planet's damage cap is 20, so if you have 2000 population, it's gonna take at least 1k energy just to drop population (assuming they don't use whatever artifact it is that kills half the population). Defense is good, but there's almost always going to be someone who can still do 20/hit.

oh okay. that makes sense. thanks!


SO I was reading the GL wiki and the hints and tips section greatly espouses the idea of spending all your rank points on decks and cargo. I'm a little confused because the overwhelming advice I've gotten here on the forum is to boost my energy and tac in the beginning rather than decks.

Do you guys wish you had spent more rank points on decks rather than energy and tac?

no....later on u'll find urself with a bunch of useless shipbots...
btw, more decks = more damage cap

Like i said you can use your rank as a ploy, i had a real nice exotic at rank 19, sat there for about 2 months planet got scanned by plenty of people but nothin ever happened to it.

At rank 170 I wish I had put LESS rank points into decks. lol

cool. I'm pretty happy with my tactics so far.

So I've decided that once I hit 19 I'm going to freeze for awhile and spend some time hacking and researching planet structures. After I get to +5 planet structures I'm going to spend some serious time upgrading weapons, hull, and sensors.


I'm also doing some NPCing because I really do like the interesting things they drop when you defeat them. But I'll stop that when I hit 19 because I don't want to rank up too quickly.

If you see any ravid, lazuli scouts (rank 5 npcs), take full advantage of them. They always drop the lazuli parts vault (+2 deck, +10 hull, +10 shields), which is rarer from the lazuli fab plant and lazuli refinery center. I think they disappear around rank 25 or so.

They don't drop from those NPCs

my bad, lazuli factory complex and lazuli titan. too many lazuli ships to keep track of...

Is deep extraction the +5 tier for planetary construction? Basically I'm asking if the count begins with the very first research branch or the second one.

edit: also, opinion-- are the quad frames worth it or should I keep my blue badges for a cipher bot?