rank 79, researched light singularity launchers, antimatter reactor markIV and positron relays, overcharged Q-phase, heavy disruption shield, and micro warp nacelle's.

better energy preferably, more energy means more bullets to shoot at more people

more energy faster means quicker level and worse tech for that level.

its always up to you, but i would say more energy. the faster you level, the more planets you gain, and the stronger you get. however, many players are successful leveling slowly, researching slowly, and advancing at a slower pace. its your choice. but i would say if you dont want energy, then go structures. thats always a good backup when you dont know what to research. you might also consider cloak or scan. itll keep you from getting annihilated off the battle tab.

decks are very limited so dont bother with cloak and how is scan gonna help me? im currently all PvP so i can get closer to 11th on kills, only made it to 16th so far

scan helps you score criticals and helps you find players with more cloak, like hackers. with my one scanner i can score up to double damage, but usually rewards me with an extra 100 or so when i hit. as for your position on the kills board, dont stress too much about it, as its not valued as highly as it once was. there was a time when there was ONLY the top ten, and you could target every player from every category. now its more of a race for low levels to get as many kills as possible, not really a show of true strength. i know its still fun to be on a board, but trust me, its more important to advance your ship and level so you can colonize more planets to gain more artifact, research, and mining, cause unless youve gotten all top-notch planet picks, your not going to be able to afford the majority of the tech you research.

Ranking up more planets , more planets, better production more research and more artifacts, so make sure your tech keeps up. you might even get prisoners and ship bots to increase your ship size.

You prefer slower levelling eh....that's the path that Derick Allen and Ramix are going for, above you on the killboards. They are my legionmates and they both have deathcounts barely above 10. I am not far behind you on the leaderboard and I am also a snail leveller. I have light antiprotons, merged nexus, heavy rifts and quantum overlay mkIII at rank 104. In that case I would suggest you try to stay on your rank, let the energy leak, and try advancing a little on hull and defense. Other than that you're doing awesome.

Like what Commonwealth<TK> said, artifacts bring in prisoners that give 3 rank points each for 4k arti points, ship bots for 1.8k arti points I think. There's also a variety of android crewmembers with their own bonuses, 1.8k arti points each.

Yah, i like ranking up quickly , i dont have only singularity cannons, warp naceless and nanospheres but i mainly focuses my research into structures, i have level 10 structures , they costed me 900,000 rp == have Dark Energy cores and isomorphic repeaters which i unlocked at rank 110 , and im focusing on scanners right now, i got warp nacelles and singularity cannons a long time ago, around rank 80, havent been researching weapons or defence ever since!
What im researching now

Xmanifold scanners > intra D colliders > wormhole relays > Q phased plating > Nexus grids > Warp nacelles > phase shifting > singularity luachers

i should finish all this in under month with no credit problems!