Should I save up to 500k and claim the artis or at 100k? Ive heard some rumours that if you save up more points you get more rescued prisoners. Is that true or is the pull completely random?

No it doesn't matter particularly aside from break points. So if you claimed a arti at less than 20k ap you wouldn't possibly get a mass storage pod from it. at less than 4k you wont get a prisoner ect. basicly, theres no real reason to save up points like that, just claim all your artis at once unless you are in the real early game where you would have to save up to hit the 4k storage to possibly get a rescued prisoner from a collect arti.

From personal experience, i found collecting artifacts on the hour every hour whilst you can would net you more artifacts like RP, but that's just from my experience. I found to be collecting almost 15 a day when i had about 40k arti collecting on the hour, as opposed to the 3-5 each time twice a day when i waited.

it not 100% random, as you need to have enougth AP to get a certain artifact.
and as Mass Storage Pod cost you 20.000 AP's your bedst chance of getting Rescued Prisoners is actualy betwen 19.999 points and 4000 points, as you cant get MSP's in that range
but the difrence is a 1 in 59 chance to get a Prisoners betwen 19.999 and 5000 points vs a 1 in 60 chance above 20K points
(and a 1 in 58 chance betwen 4.999 and 4.000 points as you cant get Continuum Beacon below 5.000 points)

if you cash in 5 * 100K points vs 500K points, you actualy get more points spendt in the 20.000 to 4.000 AP's range by dong it as 5 small cashins then one large, but you also spendt more points in the below 4000 points range where you wont get any Prisoners at all
basickly it's 16K points in the good range + 4K in the bad range vs 80k points in the good range and 20K poin bad range for 500K AP's
so hard to say how mutch difrence it realy makes in the long run, as the 2 effects works in oposit directions

if you realy want to use this to your advantages, you can cashin artifacts manualy, so you can stop once your point total drops below 4K points.....
at low production,(less then 10K pr hour) this might actualy give you an advantages, but if your production is above 50K points pr hour I wouldnt realy bother with it


if you go higher
only real difrence betwen cashing in 1.000.000+ points and 500.000 points is, that the max number of artifacts the system will give you pr cash in is 500 artifacts, and you hit that limit somewere betwen 500K and 700K points, depending mostly on how many MSP's you get.

and woth the new hyperturbines...you may WANT those msps!