Is it a good strategy or a waste of time?

Depends on why you're doing it.

Not much time to play and nothing you want to accomplish that will gain XP? Then go ahead and freeze rank. (Just be aware that it may put you quite a bit further behind the curve than continuing to add planets and whatnot).

Trying to be strong for your rank right now with no concern of the end game? Go slow/freeze.

Want to be as strong as possible as quickly as possible? Don't do it.

Want all the new things? Don't do it.

It really depends on what you're trying to do; just make sure that you are enjoying yourself while you do it -- this is a game, after all.

a few slow/freeze ranker advantages:

• If you are a dedicated scanner/trader, you will have better production for your rank than most players
• If you build your ship (and more importantly, your planets) intelligently, you will be stronger for your rank than most players
• If you are a dedicated ice-fisher, you will get your hacking/raiding medals earlier than many players
• People will generally avoid you on the BT

In certain cases, slow-ranking for a bit can help rehabilitate a ship, but it needs to be accompanied by other behavioral changes as well (getting nice arti planets rather than average mining planets, no longer putting all rank points into cargo, etc.), or else it is an utterly pointless and boring exercise.


a few disadvantages:

• You'll actually have less production and be weaker overall compared to a lot of people who have played just as long
• You're probably missing out on a lot of nice arti drops from higher rank NPCs (and NPCs in general).
• There's a lot of cool stuff you just won't be able to do or get due to it ranking you like crazy
• Teammates may resent you for not spending "your share" of energy on alerted NPCs/bases/missions

In certain cases, slow-ranking during holiday events/daily mission chains can cause you to kick yourself later over what you missed out on! You think gaining a few extra ranks over 10 days in order to attain the Uldri Wave Ejector is unacceptable? Just wait until the mission is archived and you have to complete five other missions first in order to get it... how many ranks is that?

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Again, it all comes down to what works for you. I've been ranking 3-4 times a day with Legion Missions, Scruuge-chasing, PVP, basing, and finishing the daily Uldri/Zane missions -- it's a blast! But when the holiday stuff goes away and I don't have missions I must complete every 20 hours, I'm gonna chase the hacking and raiding medals, which means ranking at a much slower pace... which is fine also, cuz it's what I wanna do, and it's fun for me.

So I guess that's the real point. If you're slow ranking because you feel your ship isn't "strong enough" for its rank or because you want to stomp on everybody on your BT and can find an enjoyable way of reaching your goals, slow ranking is a great tactic. Just make sure you're doing it intelligently and that you are aware of its drawbacks. If you're pulling your hair out with boredom because your refusal to rank is preventing you from doing 90% of the stuff you consider fun in the game, it's a terrible tactic and you should adjust your goals and method of attaining them!

I can pretty much fall under the slow ranker category, but I do it in a way thats productive and fun. Instead of just freeze ranking, what I do is I only get my XP from laughables on the Battle Tab. It allows me to gain red badges, and yellows/blues too, while waiting for the laughables to appear I gain a lot of Rescued Prisoners, and my research pushes forward. I still do elites (and I also do my fair share of damage to them as well, always locking), but aside from elites, I stick to PvPing as my way of slow ranking, though I prefer to call it productive ranking.

Don't do it WiT, go out there and blow up lots of stuff

There are only two primary reason to slow/freeze rank, from a practical standpoint:
1. NPC, specifically to get (at a later date) more NPC per rank done before you rank to the point where you lose certain NPCs. Specifically, you will be looking to increase your attack per rank ratio such that you can min-shot every NPC and therefore squeeze the most out of your ranks, as the number of rank you can do certain NPC is finite. Once you can min-shot every NPC(or at least a vast majority, some are kinda hard), you can very well move on(thou it'd be best to stay a bit longer to be able to min-shot ~100 ranks into the future and get the energy you need to auto rank that 100 ranks and have yourself a hunting spree)
2. PvP. As your PvP opponent, or at least those you will encounter in BT and usually badge from, is based on your rank, by being comparatively strong for your rank, you would have an easier time in fighting those targets and earning badges. This is, IMO, the primary motive to slow down a bit.

Other than that, there is really no practical reason. "strong for your rank" doesn't really matter anywhere else as the other stuff does not have a rank restrict of any kind and simply being strong, which is easier achieved by ranking up, is good enough.

i can think of a couple of really good reasons that dan has provided, but last time i got involved in this discussion i was told that being mylarai and kronyn was stupid, or something like that.

Waste of time.. as might as well quit playing the game cause if you slow/freeze ranking you are not really playing the game

Met a few people who were gonna slow rank because they were weaker rank 1000+
They were easy badge targets for me before they started slow/freeze ranking and months later they are even easier targets.
Now eventually I will rank out of their badge range but that will take awhile.
Other ships their rank right now are gonna see them as easy targets for a few hundred ranks or lets call it close to a years play time.

The only ships they are gaining an advantage over are the ships too low for them to see.
When those ships finally pop into their badge range they will be easy targets but only for a short amount of time.
The ships ranking at a steady pace and improving their artifact daily at the cost of ranking will eventually be the same rank as these players but a little weaker, 100 ranks later though they will be about even and then another 100-200 ranks they will find those people easy badge targets.

Now if you spend a couple years slow/freeze ranking at a lower rank, probably below 500 then the people who can badge you will rank too fast to have a time where you become an easy badge target.

BEING MYLARAI AND KRONYN WAS STUPID IF YOU ARE NOT AN EXCAVATOR EITHER TALTH OR KONQUL U R PLAYING THE GMAE WRONG!

thanks for proving my point

There is only ONE WAY to play corectly! Research and mining are USELESS don't you know?! You could be a Litheor Excavator maybe but otherwise might as well quit the game forever because you are just waasting ur time.

Only noobs think Talth is better than Litheor

That was uncalled for.

Konqul > Litheor > Taltherian > every other races

Konkul is good but can be a trap too. People can become reliant on it if their production isnt up to snuff.
Litheor is great but you need a need good collection of quality arti planets to use it on first.
Taltherian is best used to equalize the resources of a non-arti planet before using terraformers. (If its a reasonable amount of uses, nobody wants to wait 2 weeks to finish)

Alternating Litheor and talth is the way to go imo. Build a batch, lith them, repeat.

It is a thing. People do it.

Around Late July or August I started to go somewhat inactive and just only collected resources and doing very little overall. I might of ranked twice a week tops if that sometimes. I went that way till mid October roughly and I noticed how much I fell behind to some of my friends and enemies. 3-5 months can be enough for you to fall behind a lot and with someone like myself that is not anywhere's near as active as some others here then that can mean a lot.
I think as long as you are improving your ap then it is all good.

Slow/freeze ranking is good for those who want to prepare for higher ranks because doing this gives you time to research planet structures and scanning modules. Instead of having to upgrade all your planet mods to +12 later on, you'll get to upgrade them earlier without having to do all that work to upgrade them later. For scans, you'll be able to get those scanning medals faster and be able to do missions that require lots of scans. Not only this, but you'll be able to grab a buttload of engineers that you won't have to waste space on reactors to get so big at higher ranks.

Slow/Freeze ranking would be a great plan... if you had started it 3 years ago