7500 points for 50 planets sounds plausible. And that's what I actually have. So it might be just me having shitluck at drawing artifacts. Not to mention that due to the fact that gaseous planets are quite more abundant than desert and alike you might be "forced" to go heavy research instead of artifacts. Also the last two large/very large desert I found are just awful. Sparse/very sparse on everything. It's not like I have 10 terra's and oceans laying around and I chose to colonize gas planets. I colonize what I get.

P.S.

Iggy, 15k points for 50 planets is kind of far-fetched. Even if you are crazy enough not to build any kind of defense or cloak. Maybe if you would buy the two planets from missions and use gaia/melters/crystalizers after enlarging all the planets to Very Massive then using a lot of terraformers on them. Otherwise, with the normal quality planets you get from scanning I don't see how you could pull more than 10k out of 50 planets. And level up fast while at it.

If you kill enough npc's those planet enhancers will drop like flies and with enough energy you just can keep going killing more npc's, building 15x mega rich planets like crazy..

Yeah I'm not at that point yet to farm... however after I switched to Inergon any mission I can force over 3.0 xp ratio with XP buffs is continuous leveling... for example I finished Octafari Distress all at once by hitting aggressive evolution to throw me into next rank with 500+ XP. So, 13 ranks in 20 minutes. Titancore, a couple exotic missions, and a few others that need items (so are not ideal for it) will work (2.4+ base ratio missions). I just ran out of exotic matter to do it.

Energy Build +

After a slow npc run, I calculated 2.85 base xp/energy, and I wasn't using max weapons either. This is better than almost all missions. The only problem is repairing fast enough to make use of xp buffs; more def/hull can help with that.

Or sheild restorers. Defense helps a lot too.

OK, I just ran a 2 hr NPC hunt (4 buffs, nothing fancy), removed all those small energy boosting things when I could (all except tech cores are low cost to repair, NPC drops mostly), maxed weapons with about 100 space it gave me. So about 3350 energy = almost 10k xp, I had about 200 left to go when I was done without using any XP buffs, so in a few hours I can rank again. I usually do the highest XP mission (right now, aggressive evolution) to jump into the next level, esp. if using XP buffs and mission running. I used extra cubes to complete a bunch of crappy ratio missions, even so I was always > 50% into next rank so wasting some of the energy. Going for that final mission reward to charge faster, 74 so far completed. To use XP buffs while NPC farming you have to have high def and hull, or use repair artifacts, I've found it difficult to discharge a significant portion of my energy bar during that time period, but it will get easier with time and tech.

With engineers + Inergon, I'm getting 11 en per rank + anything from rescued prisoners, compared to 40 XP more each rank. So you need somewhere around 3.6 xp/en ratio to rank continuously (in the long run anyway, it will approach this, but fixed amounts from cores will lower it). NPC hunting seems to have a base ratio around 2.7-2.9 depending, and I think it's worse with some mission NPCs spawning. But I'm also not really built for it either, so I would say it's pretty efficient, more than missions anyway. Plus loot drops.


I just saw something that made me think...

"old" forum post in viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3449&start=0, where I said "I am rank 184". Dec 29. Now, Jan 14, I am 255.9 (about to rank, couple hours). That's ~72 ranks in about 2 weeks using high energy, XP buffs, and every technique I have to squeeze more XP out of it.

Just on the planet production thing. It's possbile to get close to 10k from 50 planets. My PQI is pretty close to 200. About 197. 60 planets give me almost 12000 resources.

The way to do it is to kill lots of NPCs. I mean LOTS. I've only done 380 missions and I'm rank 240. Killed 4800 NPCs so far. Most have been in the last 6 or 7 months.

I've got 12 terraformers from doing that. I used the first 10 to get a hyperterraformer which have me a 13x massive exotic. Used two more t get in up to 15x. The planet pumps out over 900 points and once I've got the last level of planet production research I might be able to squeeze 950 out of it. If I ever get a quasi-spacial expander (none yet!) I reckon I can get it up to 1000.

I've also got enough toxic purifiers to make one very large planet 15x mining and started on another. It's 3x at the moment.

I messed up a bit using research optimisers and wasted a couple on a small planet. Finally worked it out and have a very massive metallic at 10x. it produces over 500 RP+.

I only colonise decent planets. Usually very large rich planets are a minimum but I'm Vygoid and large rich research planets are also good for me. Got a couple of very or extremely abundant planets which I invaded a while back. One or two are ice planets which can be turned into oceanic. Got some good Desert planets and I think they can be made better by turning them into crystal planets but I've not reached the mission which has the artifact yet. It might be the one which drops the artifact for ice-> oceanic planets.

From experience and other threads the best way to get XP is to kill NPCs. Al the drops make it worthwhile too. I got 4 of those Drannik Ballistae weapons in a few days. Gave me 320 extra attack for 40 ship space (and -160 energy but I login in every 12 hours anyway so that's not a problem).

My good planets are well defended too. It's rare anyone takes one from me or takes one back. I've had 3 planetary fluxes dropped by Dark Arms Carriers. They're very useful for protecting good planets as well as things like passive cloak from NPC drops (interspacial fold generators). The 10x research planet has about 1000 passive cloak and has been fluxed.

I try to level up every day but it's hard because I put most of my rank points into ship size. Got about 5500 RP, 3000 MP and 3500 AP from 60 planets. Curremtly researching the last planet production tree (each stage is 1,100,000 RP!), Should take a month or two to get through all of them.

I just scanned 500 things, so what I can tell you is .. naturally occurring yields with no defense about 150 PQI, and I mean not that they are common but that you can find enough to fill your slots at higher ranks. v.large / rich to v.large / v.rich (and the various stuff in between with similar value) I have like 100 on scans. Now, with gaias and all that stuff, toxic purifier, etc, you'll possibly have 200 PQI if you are picky about planets. But I'm saying I never expect to get one less than 150 PQI again, I will always have at least that on my scans more than I can afford to colonize.

I respect the fact that you have a high rank, but you are wrong. Artifact production is everything if you want a good ship. Ranking up means nothing except that you have more rank points and can colonize more planets. But you cannot colonize anything good unless you either wait months for the artifacts to give you enough purgers to justify a scan blitz, or you spend money on energy to do the purger mission. You can talk about the highest level of scanners, but I had those done at level 300....
Artifact production, gentlemen. I don't have people 150 levels above me complimenting me on my ship because I ranked up quickly.....

I agree that artifact production is extremely important. I've never said it wasn't. In fact, I've always said it was.

The whole point of leveling quickly is to get more planets which allows you to get more artifact points. As to doing purger missions. It's not energy that's a problem, it's exotic matter (I know that Reverus has traded for enough to complete it 1500+ times, he is the merchant king of this game).

One benefit of ranking faster using the engineer route is that you have a crap load of energy. I can insta level just doing purger missions.

Since, I'm more than twice the level of most everyone who went slowly. It means I have twice the artifact cap level (less than 8 hours for me to cap it). Which means my ship has the potential to get twice as many of those ship improving artifacts. Which means, I become stronger than those ranking slower as time goes by.

I just topped 10k AP / hr , yes it helps a lot for ship development. However, I also put so many engineers that I can run the purger mission whenever I have exotic, energy isn't the limiting factor anymore. I was able to rank 20 times from the exotic I traded for yesterday all at once, with a single RSL and 2 neurals, and apply about 100 rank points into decks since more energy would result in waste at this point. NPC are more experience than the mission so similar thing applies, I can rank from that when I don't have any exotic, the limit is only shield recharge rate.

Note I don't rank for planet slots anymore, I have about 50 free ones and it gets so costly you are forced to slow down, but I have 2132 purger missions completed so at this point it's about finding better planets and not ranking, that's just a side effect. You do at a high AP level get more rank points from prisoners/others/bots than you get from ranking, on average. Most of this doesn't apply at a lower level, especially for those who went deck heavy for most of their ranks and scoffed at engineers. Frail is the best example of what energy build can do, fully developed decks as well. I'm getting there as well.

The AP drops actually accelerate your growth rate after awhile (more extra points for decks), although yes exotic is the biggest problem. I just cannot share as fast as people buy planets from me.

Oh yeah , "Ranking up means nothing except that you have more rank points and can colonize more planets" --> daily reward: You gain 13,974,819,316 Credits