the OP has 1066 planets occupied at rank 4825
i have 692 planets occupied at rank 3491
working on the
ranks page of the wiki quite a few years ago, it was obvious that invasion costs would eventually get out of hand if i didn.t manage my total number of planets.
1st step was to maintain around 30% mining planets (which had a lot of naysayers here at the time), though that focus has now slackened somewhat since both my arti and mining productions cap in the same timeframe of around 5.5 hours, and research points have helped top up the daily credit supply. this was also an aspect of aiming for SSB status, to minimize the daily ship upkeep and give more buffer for daily (and now even twice daily after scan blitzes) invasion costs.
2d step was to start increasing my standards for what types of planets i would be willing to invade to keep. even planets that would still be better than some of my existing occupied planets would be alerted for legion members instead if they didn.t have any non.extractable structures that i rated more highly.
3d step was to spend GP to start abandoning my worst producers (much easier than waiting to get the artis to improve all of them to top.tier status) - a process that i have now undergone for years, but which has been more limited by extractor supply than by not being able to find candidates to abandon and alert to pass on to legion members.
out of 692 planets currently occupied:
499 artfact production / project planets (minimum 540 artifact per hour for non.projects)
83 mining production planets (minimum 1236 mining per hour)
110 storage planets (minimum 12953 cloak before legion bonus)
0 futbawl planets (7 on scan)
5.16 hours to cap mining production
5.37 hours to cap artifact production
2.55 hours to cap research production