Hi..a few weeks ago my friend was 10+ levels behind me

A few days ago, he reached the same level I was. I was pretty shocked. I don't know what I'm doing wrong to level so slowly, while he levels so quickly. I think yesterday it seemed like he gained 2 more levels and is now currently higher leveled than me.

I asked him what he was doing to level so quickly, and he says he's not telling.

We compared ship stats and I found that I had more energy + relays, and he had less energy and no relays.

I know he doesn't use galaxy points to level so quickly, so what am I doing wrong to level so slowly?
I'm currently doing a mission with a 2.4 exp/energy rate, and I occasionally fight npcs but not all the time.
The only big advantage he has over me is his high attack power.

Their are so many things he could be doing to gain levels on you.
Your both fairly new if your asking the question.
Also he may foolishly be using energy cubes or tri-max that he gets on his daily reward.
Also his energy reward rate is much higher than yours at 2.4 if he is battling NPC's. When battling NPC's at the lower levels you just want to go for weapons/attack power. Kill them in 4 hits and you could easily get 6 energy reward rate. Their are missions that give much higher energy reward rate than 2.4. The artifacts you get from NPC's are great until you get to many of them. Just be sure your scan rate is at least 500 to see the rarest boss ship with a cloak of 500. another thing when I was at rank 210 I got in to a little fight with a player at rank 325. I took his unguarded planet. I held my own and even got the best of him during fights when we where both online going through massive amounts of artifacts and energy (I recharged twice with a max around 1000). Being 10 ranks different means nothing. Even I can take down PSIcore when he isn't set up for attack/defense. It's what I like about the game you have to balance and are always vulnerable in one area or another.

maybe he logs on more often than you.

if you have both better researched energy cores and relays and you always use your relays the only way he could pass you so quickly is most likely buying galaxy points and using them on energy recharge.. this used with exp boosting arts and NPC fighting can help you lvl pretty effortlessly depending on your rank and what energy cores you have on your ship... but eventually this "effortless" rank jumping will come to an end once you research in energy is no longer sufficient based on how many ranks ahead you have jumped.

Everyone has given great replies. I would only add to check your race against his. If he is human, that's 10% more xp he is getting. When you add that to artifacts like Neurals and RSLs, he could be getting 20-30% more experience than you! Oh, and he could be sacrificing deck space for engineers. So when you look at his ship, it looks like you have the same energy cores and relays, but if he has more crew dedicated to energy, it will show up over time in faster ranking.

Engineers + energy tech. Ranked from 312 -> 336 -> 355, two runs today using RSL implant+neural interface+high xp ratio mission+enough mission items. Just ridiculous huh? I almost doubled in about a month, and this is without GP energy refills. However, it's a rather extreme build and requires module and cost management depending on the task at hand. I still put in about 500 decks to get it started, the growth is fueled by shipbots and AP drops now. It requires some planning and it's not for everyone. You won't have the same capabilities as similar ranked deck builds, but you will rank faster than everyone else.

Another thing you may want to keep in mind is that you don't necessarily want or need to level up quickly. You want to tailor your progress based on the level of research you are doing along with your level.

If you do try leveling pretty fast, be careful to watch your mining. Costs will start to rise pretty fast, and if you take a planet every chance you get (which you probably will at lower levels at least) you won't be saving up much between planets.

If I were to give advice on how to level up fast I would say

1: Play or Race change (Via artifact or 20 GP) a Human for 10% extra exp. This is a MUST.

2: Use GP (get it free through promotions or pay for it) and get TWO Father Relays. These are a MUST.

3: Ever rank you get raise your Engineers until you have a base of 200 energy.

4: Adjust your planets 3/5 Research, 1/5 Artifact, 1/5 Minerals. Collect them in that order of priority, take your time with planets and take nothing smaller than Average and nothing less than Very Abundant.

5: Put 2/3 of your Research into Energy until you have no less than three Antimatter Reactor Mark IV's and four Positron Relays. Use the remaining 1/3 of your research on Scanning to find new planets. (Every three upgrades in energy you should upgrade once in scanning.)

6: Once you are high enough in rank (20 I believe) use ALL of your energy on the mission chain "A Stryll Target" this will lead you to a mission only artifact that at rank 50 (you can use it earlier for less effect) gives you 20 Energy and 55 Scanning. Do no other mission until you have four of these on your ship.

Research Note:
All research is important the idea is to give you a big leg up on energy though, once you are well ahead in Energy and Scanning spread your research evenly.
Shields aren't great for your ship if you play often but allow you to build planet shields that are very useful in keeping your planets. Weapons, Defenses, and Hull are all useful on your ship for clear reasons, cloaking is nice for hackers though unless you want to focus on hacking, I it think it draws to much attention to you so I would let it fall behind a bit to raise others up faster. Scanning for new planets and without a doubt you will always want to raise your planetary structures to collect more resources.

Artifact Note:
These are useful at any rank but once you are able to collect 20,000 points you have the chance for a Mass Storage Artifact that will give you FREE 60 cargo on your ship. Once you get to the point of having 20,000 points as an option don't let your artifact points drop below 20,000 make 20k your new 0 so that every time you pick up an Artifact you have the chance to get a Mass Storage. Once you get one let it build back up to a base of 20,000 points.

Ship Build:
Crew is important for raiding but if your focus is ranking up through missions you will need a lot of deck space to add all the energy and scanning equipment to your ship. As I said above raise your energy to 200 first and foremost after that I would put a few ranks into cargo to get you a 200 base so that you can trade out parts with ease. From that point its ALL in Decks, once you get 400 Decks raise your Base Energy from 200 to 300, at 500 Decks raise your Base Energy again to 400. For a rank up build there is almost no reason to put any rank points into any crew aside from Engineers.

Rank Up Tip:
Right before you rank up make sure you UN-instal your relays to give you the most energy as your bar will fill up after a rank up. As soon as you rank up burn through all your energy down to 0 and ONLY use a Energy Cube or Tri-Matrix Emblem (if you have one) at that point. Never waste one when you are less then a full energy bar away from your next rank as you'll get a full bar again and waste any left over energy. Save ALL your energy cubes and Tri-Matrix Emblems until your rank 50 along with any Artifacts that boost your Exp. At that point you should have a few saved up (also note there is a mission that rewards Energy Cubes). You should have enough at that point to use one every rank for a dozen or so ranks allowing you to keep your rank pace from 1 to probably around rank 80.

This is my PERSONAL advice, this isn't the only way to rank up. I hope you or anyone else finds this information useful. If you disagree with me feel free to post your own guide but please no flames the point of the thread is to help this player out.

If your aim is to rank up quick or if your over rank 50 look up Delta V2 (Our emblem is a blue/grey star) we have a little room in our legion for now and welcome anyone to join.

His is a reasonable early game guide. Here's the scoop on higher rank power leveling:

Simple:
- Be Human or Inergon. Buy FATHER relays as suggested if at all possible. They get better as your charge time lowers with other relays. Do research first, get enough decks to be function before going engineers. Learn to swap modules efficiently and use the correct tech level for your income level. NPC/boss module drops are small and cheap, they will come in handy while decks are limited.
- You want to match the rate of XP increase each rank as much as possible. You don't want to have to sit and wait for relays to charge your energy that much, and you don't want the time spent waiting to increase each rank.
- Each rank increases the amount to rank by 40 XP.
- The amount of energy you need to rank again depends on the XP/energy ratio of your missions or activities.
- Human or Inergon race allows you to effectively put in 11 energy per rank (all points into engineers) guaranteed
- High artifact points increases your gain of rescued prisoners (to put into engineers). This becomes the most important resource type for ranking. You can also get the rank points you are missing out when using only engineers, with artifact drops: cargo, decks (the main one), defense, scientists.

More complicated:
- (rank*40) / maxenergy (with relays off and all energy modules on) gives you a target ratio. To rank up multiple times you need to find a mission that combined with XP buffs (RSL implant + neural interface = 25% gain) has this ratio. Many of them require certain items however; make sure you have enough to completely finish it. Mission XP ratios without XP buffs are show in the wiki (multiply by 1.25).
- When you are about to rank, save enough energy to do the highest XP mission on your list. Optionally, also hit all NPC you see until they are just about to die. Get as close as possible to ranking without doing it. Then, pop XP buffs, do the high XP mission to bump you into next rank, add your rank points into engineers, then do a bunch of the target mission until you are close to ranking again; if you have enough energy near the end to do your highest mission and then some extra, then adjust by doing some low XP ratio missions to use up the extra which is otherwise wasted; pop the high XP mission to rank again, repeat until mission is done, you run out of time on XP buffs, or you don't quite have the XP to rank again (but you will be close anyway). If you are getting near not having enough, remember to kill the NPCs with a couple shots to give you a boost for minimal energy (since you already invested in hitting them before you started).
- If you never get extra rank points from artifacts, you will approach a target ratio of 3.64 (assuming Human/Inergon) as you rank. The better your energy cores and other things that boost energy, the lower your actual ratio will be. If you have good artifact production you will get some rescued prisoners; the average extra rank points from this you get per level defines the target ratio you will approach over time for multi-ranking:

0 rank point extra/rank = 3.64 (2.91 ratio mission with XP buffs will work)
1 rank point extra/rank = 3.31 (2.65 ratio mission with XP buffs will work)
2 rank point extra/rank = 3.03 (2.42 ratio mission with XP buffs will work)
3 rank point extra/rank = 2.80 (2.24 ratio mission with XP buffs will work)
4 rank point extra/rank = 2.60 (2.08 ratio mission with XP buffs will work)

Note most missions are around 2.20+ base at mid level to high level. So, 1 rescued prisoners artifact per rank will allow you to keep up with the XP requirements for the average mission (note that when you ARE keeping up, you rank multiple times and thus you will eventually increase your target ratio until you can't rank multiple times anymore given your mission set). NPC hunting for an energy build is roughly 2.7-2.9 base if you optimize attack, but drops drastically when you start to get crimson flamehawks; there are some tricks around this (mostly patience and purging your NPC list) but they aren't compatible with XP buffs time limits; some bosses will have an efficient XP/energy also, more than 3.0. Just hitting NPCs with no kill bonus is about 2.1 btw.

Note on races : Human is better if you are charging a lot. Inergon completes missions faster, while Human milks more XP out of a high ratio mission. You will get the same ranking capacity from a full energy bar from each, approximately. For example, you power rank through a 2.6 ratio mission worth 100k XP, you will get 10k more out of it as Human. However, say you are doing stellar cartography, the XP is basically the same for both races but you will get 10% more purgers as Inergon.