i wanted to pass on a little experience i have had with this game. at first i was not sure to research and went for planetary production and energy research. once i reached a level where i really could not afford to buy what i had researched i stopped. i started researching scanning and found my planets, and only took ones that were rich and one extremely abundant. i went back to energy until the next tier was 18000. at this point i let myself get distracted and got good defense, cloaking shields and weapons.

the point i wanted to pass on, is this. energy is so much the lifeblood of this game. its nice that i have Heavy Phase Canons, Subspace Sensors Mark III, Spacial Thrusters, EM Adaptive Panels, Subspace Sensor - Mark III and the rest for my level at rank 50. i feel if i didnt feel the sticker shock of 18000 for the next level of energy and get distracted researching other tiers. i would have been a number of ranks farther then i am now. i know all the other tech help me defend my planets, but i really can only defend one at a time. if i had stuck with energy and planetary production i would be researching faster and making more credits. i also could have offset inferior weapons etc with more of then given additional deck space and caught up later with those techs at a faster rate.

so for new players my mantra would be energy first, planetary production second and scanning third. level up faster by not fighting or hacking. run missions that give you really good experience return for energy and ones that unlocks more missions. dont worry about those big missions the ones that give you artifacts until you reach a level where it wont take you 2 weeks to complete a 2 week mission. i feel those are more suited for higher level players who can actually put a dent it it by leveling up/overnight energy. since this is not like other games where people can try to "rush" you, your better building your economic base and energy reserve/production rate first.

these are just my observations. im sure that many aggressive player will may disagree, but i think a little patience early will pay off in the end....

right... i just made a HUGE push and got my positron relays and antimatter mk4's which are awesome btw. i had to totally neglect my weapons and def research. everyone including you are up to my tech level in weapons. i also have H phased @ lv 53. had i spent the points on weapons instead i would be at heavy grav shearers + more def by now. energy will pay off in the long run tho.

just finishing up that tier also. always so tempting to spend 2k on a shield/defense upgrade instead of dumping it into energy.

Energy has no sex appeal, but its so important. To me its the real currency of this game....if your energy rich...your rich

I thought i might give this a second life. I would add that people should really put all rank points into engineers or a heavy balance towards then. Dont worry about pvp as much early and you can be a monster later. I have seen it first hand.

energy is key but i find it better to npc hunt, i always thought that was the fastest way to level up

Think of it this way. I get over 4 k energy every time i level, the guys who started early with engineers are well over 10k. Think how many levels you need to get that much energy. when your high enough you can auto level which means you can level just from missions or npc hunting with the energy with leveling.

The only reason I would disagree with this is because it is SOOO much easier to get your badges early in the game the later. The same goes for the missions that require kills/invades/etc. I would say go very slow while you have your two weeks of protection and once you come out of it, then blast through with energy. Plus at that level, Dominion cannons will be really good.

Anyone notice that this was first posted around a year ago. Bender is giving his advice from hindsight which is 20/20.

Badges really dont help much except for the domination canons. Right now the only other thing any good is the mining thing. get your energy and planets going first, worry about pvp later. I have a good pvp ship, but lack the energy to do a lot of very rewarding missions and npc hunting. with more energy comes more npcs you can kill, more rsl's to get, more blade harvesters to get, more planet fluxs. its not as fun at first but in the long run your better off. The only way i say go the other way is if you intend to spend GP for energy refills then things change.

i've got a question tho (noob that i am): if i put all of my rank points in to engineers like you suggest how am i supposed to have deck/cargo space to use anything? it seems that i would have a ton of energy yet wouldn't be able to do anything except do missions that don't require high attack, kills, raids, etc. i'm a sillix merchant atm but was considering switching to konqul and using a 2-1-1-1 system of building but none of the things i would be putting points in to are engineers. are you saying that just researching energy would not be enough? thank you for your insights.

you will get your decks through other means, mainly artifact draws getting you ship bots, rescued prisoners and other nice androids to help the other stats, by having a good energy and then good scan you can fill up on planet slots and get planets more often, upping your artifact research and mining income.

cannon badges are an early-mid game advantage. late game you're buying crew instead of decks anyways, so the occasional piece of gear becomes less and less critical.

I jumped from Antimatter reactors to Isomorphic repeaters, i had dark energy cores and the iso relays at rank 100. I had taken a crappy planet (average : Abundant), but a rank 19 did me a favor and invaded it for me. Other dodgy planets i had managed to improve with hydroshiters and gamma crystallisers etcetc.

lol you improved your planets with some wet poop? so pretty much the consensus is drop rank points in to engineers and that's it right? i ask because all over the forum it's been "decks, decks, and more decks!" that people have seemed to be pushing.

My opinion:
There are 3 real strategies to this game:
Energy, Energy, ENERGY!!!
Decks, decks, decks!

And the third one, which is often overlooked:
My friend came up with this, so credit to StrmAvenger, who doesn't go on forums.
Basically, get as far as you can putting nothing into energy.
Yeah, nothing. At all. You think: Why? Everyone will get really far ahead of me.
Think of it this way:
Rank up everyday, 10k research. (for example)
Rank up everyweek 70k research.
He's rank 24. And working on phase cannons. Slowly.
One problem with this stratergy:
Hard to get anywhere later on.
Run out of money.

Well, he sticks to mining/research. He ignores artifact to some degree, summit like 40/50/10 mining/research/artifact.

This counters the lack of cash.

I'm also rank 74, and prepared to help him out of he runs really low.
I only have 350ish energy, 130 of which is engineers, I have Quantum Disassemblers by rank 70. Not bad, not amazing.
He only gets like, 60 research, or summit like that (I can't remember at the moment), but he still has far superior tech to anyone else his rank, thanks to staying with 100 energy.

Alternatively, throw it all into energy and get to rank 20 on your first day. Be stupid. Fight them off with auto cannons and autopilot consoles. Your smart, you'll work out a way.

Can I also point out that he's Konqul Fixer, which aids him in pking, it also doesn't really pay off until rank 40 or so, when you already have Graviton Shearers, or atleast that's what we think will happen.

I agree with the original post completely; even if you get so much energy that people at your level are stronger than you, you'll be stronger than people who started at the same time as you, and energy is what allows you to actually play the game anyway.

But your so weak. Once your rep starts dropping, it drops fast. Once you hit 'laughable' you logg on everyday disabled. Why would you want that?

That isn't true, and it would hardly make a difference anyway. Even if you did log on everyday disabled, you could just repair and then do whatever you want. Why would you want to log on everyday with no energy to use?

To actually be stronger for the rank that you are at. I agree that by higher ranks you do need to upgrade energy, but until around rank 40 or so you can work with 100 energy. Then start researching energy and focus on decks. Having a huge amount of energy fails if you never get it full, if you have 350 energy, the recharge time is almost 15 hours! If you have 4k energy I dread to think what the recharge is...
At the moment I do not use relays, but as my energy increases I will look into them.