Hey all, I recently upgraded to Heavy Thetacrons in an effort to push my NPC hunting skillz into the autolevel zone, but to my dismay, Flamehawks started showing up with a ridiculous frequency (10%+ if you can believe it), slapping my NPC hunting arse back down to the ground.

I'm looking for tips and tricks on maximizing my NPC hunting return. If you have something, please lend your knowledge.

Here are some tricks I already know:

- maximize NPC slots by doing the mission chains that give extra spots
- stack all available npc killing bonuses
- go drannik
- don't finish Decrypting the Vault
- uninstall relays and ion pulse ballistae prior to levelling

What am I missing?

The Exotic Tactical Algorithm can help; fight until your slots are full of Flamehawks then use the ability to remove them. It's not a sure-fire avoidance or anything, but it helps. Other than that, I don't think I've done anything you don't have on that list, and I'm using Heavy Thetacron Cannons as well, getting a few hundred kills a day and two levels a day.

Don't finish the Chron Shifter and Asteroid missions. There are a couple of others that give NPCs but these are the easy ones.

Do the Exotic Algorithm mission, then battle until you have all slots full of flamehawks, then flush them all at once.

Forgot about that; got the Chron Shifters a long time ago, but having the Asteroids has really helped.

Why don't finish the asteroid mission? The xp on them is terrible.

It's not any worse than Flamehawks, at least for me, a d they take fewer hits and do almost no damage, so I'd rather see them than a Flamehawk.

Why would you not complete the decrypting the vault mission? those things take far too long to kill

Also: what level are flamehawks? Im 278 and I havent seen them yet

They are simple compared to the Flamehawks.

As ODragon said, they're easier to kill than Flamehawks (which appear at rank 350), give better experience, and the research bonus can be nice (I got 16K from them one night).

EDIT: Fixed mistake on Flamehawk rank.

Flamehawk come at level 350.

I didn't finish the Rogue Data mission and now I see so many Flamehawk, I'm so happy to see a Rogue Data on my BT.

Remember want something gone bad ( Rogue Data ) it's always can be worst ( Flamehawk ).

To autolevel, think of it like this:

XP to rank = 40*Rank
XP ratio = xp/energy used while doing something, for NPC this is typically around 3.0 or higher. Better attack = higher ratio, which is why drannik is the race of choice.

If your max energy * XP Ratio > XP to rank, you can autolevel from NPC hunting. Note that engineers are more efficient for this than tac officers in most cases. If you are already running Heavy Thetacrons and Drannik, then more attack from tac officers is marginal benefit to the XP ratio; if you have a huge energy bar already, then it might be worth adding tac officers with prisoner drops, but you should almost always put the 5 rank up pts into engineers to maintain your ratio.

Every rank, for example at XP ratio 3.0, you need 40/3.0 = 13.33 more energy to maintain autoleveling. You can get 10 with engineers from rank up pts. 1 prisoner = 3 pts = 6 engineers = 6 energy, so 1 prisoner per 2 ranks will basically do it. This is why high AP is critical as well, to get more prisoners per day, allows more ranks per day with the proper ratio to rank again. Note the ratio may be higher than 3.0; if you can get a lot done in a short time, a neural for example will help the ratio on a bunch of NPCs for 20 minutes; if your attack is high for your rank, then your ratio will exceed 3.0.

With the data analyzers -- well its a rank 200 idk if one can even see it past rank 600, but if you don't care about finishing that chain then sure leave it. I finished all of those long ago, before I realized it might make things easier (cause at the time it WAS a pain in the butt, before flamehawks).

If you can do it with a 3.0 ratio, then some missions with ratio 2.4+ can be used to autolevel as well, with a neural+RSL. The same math as above applies, but you've got to get your energy up.

tag

Thanks for the info, and thanks for the expert explanation BinaryMan. Clear and concise. I hope everyone was following along.

When does Flamehawks disappear?

Never.

Oh Hell.

They do get a little easier as you get bigger and stronger Flamehawks arent a nightmare for me anymore i will still flush them but they arent the horrid thing as when you first get to see them.

Is it fair to describe them as the Siege Cannons of the high-end game? Pain in the ass for a while, but not so bad as you progress?

You telling me the flame hawks are matched enemies then?

Yeah I guess you could look at them that way, just an energy dump really


No they aren't a matched enemy, they are a lvl 400 NPC (shows up at 350) so for the first little bit you fight them, they are a major pain in the ass, but later on they aren't that bad, still annoying though