If pvp had been more prevalent, I would have dumped more points into decks and have a larger ship just to try to protect myself. Lol, I think I have a smaller ship than anyone who is even 100 ranks lower than me. But, you know what they say, it's not the size of the ship but the motion of the ocean. If, I start dumping everything into decks now, I can probably get close to 2000 in a month from now.

If there were more reason to pvp, I would become a Konqul like Nocifer. But as things stand, I'm switching to Drannik like you, to get the better energy to xp ratio for fighting NPCs.

Heck ya thats the only way to go if you don't fight PVP. Don't get me wrong if someone attacks me or try's to take a world from me I will destroy them at least once based on their fault. I can do this since I have good weapons on. But since I don't do much PVP and I do a LOT of NPC fighting Drannik is the only way. I mean come on 40% extra attack when fighting NPC. Then you can get those artifacts that raise it another 20% when fighting NPC's mixed with all your other bonuses. I'm all most out of Crimson Amplifier's so that is sad but with those I get a 90% increase in my attack when fighting NPC's. That is just crazy good. I'm maxing out the damage I can do on a few of them the way I'm set up right now. lol

Lol. Thousands? I think not. It's less.. I definitely spend less since last summer because things come much easier from high production and NPC.. We had no NPC system during early times.. I'll say $50 a month at most so far that is equivalent to buy one new PS3 game a month so that's pretty cheap.. I mostly invest into planetary upgrades almost 100% since last summer so no ship upgrades needed at all thanks to self-sustaining production.. Hey.. I like this game a lot and Dan is one of best developers that I had seen in long time so I am happy to be one of his sponsors to make this game more sophisticated and fun for everyone.. He earns it..

Nice! 8k is quite impressive. Care to screenshot it? I only have 4,200/hr mining, 6k/hr artifact and 6k/hr RP and I own about 98% of all planets classified as rare or greater.. I even have so many colossal and even some mega colossal ones.. I have about 40 oceanic planets and almost all of them give out great artifacts.. I couldn't imagine how can have higher artifact production per hour other than race/class that boost 10% artifact/20% RP.. I'm Konqul fixer so no boost on production.. Hey, I just realize something.. You probably don't even cloak any of your planets and populate them? My standard base set up is 1 +650 population and 1 cloak +500 structure on every planet and rest are artifact structures plus resource structures..

Yeah, your right.

I only have cloak/def/pop on my 5 best planets. Almost all of my planets have level 10 buildings. So far, I've only lost 1 planet (knock on wood).

only cloak/def/pop ?
That sounds like 5 useless planet, a planet is as usefull as the buildings on the actual planet itself.

I see where the misinterpretation could have come from. I should have written, I have cloak/def/pop structures on my 5 best planets and none on the rest of my planets.

"My standard base set up is 1 +650 population and 1 cloak +500 structure on every planet and rest are artifact structures plus resource structures.."

Kind of surprised, I thought defense was the main stat to prevent invasion; does that cloak really prevent it's discovery? Population just makes it take more energy to invade. With fluxing becoming less common I guess you can just take back any random planet that gets invaded since your attack is insane (isn't it an opposed attack to planet def/att roll?)

On the other issue, I've found it easier to keep all my planets around the same quality and not try to make any of them the "best" since it just tempts people to take it. I'd rather have a good planet no higher rank will take than one twice as good that I have to spend 50% the space to defend and hope someone doesn't take it -- you get the same resources out of it either way and less risk. Since it appears very few planet improving artifacts are being dropped anymore, most new players aren't going to ever see XX mega rich anything, the high ranks can fight all they want over rare planets as long as I don't have to deal with it. I don't build anything except resource structures and maybe a some cloak if no one's scanned it yet and I have extra space; instead I focus on quantity over quality with planets and ranking up to get more.

Also, regular flux scanning is the foundation of a stable and healthy collection of celestial bodies.

~ D

Flux probing is no problem. I have about 50 of them after selling a bunch. Knowing that they've been scanned doesn't really do anything with this info since I no longer get Planetary Fluxes. I'll post an update to my list in the other thread but I can tell you, 500 artifact shipments over 20k each and not a single Planetary Flux.

I feel your pain. Even being a younger rank... I feel your pain. I too remember having bunches of them. But still, if you flux probe regularly, you can see changes to the ship scans and then alter planetary defenses appropriately. My planets are all 0 scanned currently, Monday, if any change, I can, if necessary, install traps and sentries and change cloaking to defense, etc. Its just one style, no one but me has to play like that...

~ D

(I love spending credits mind you...)

Defense is rather useless most of the time as more and more ship attack power had gone up alot via more NPC/Mission modules that boost attack while planetary defense is largely "flat". +100 defense vs +0 defense against ship of 4k attack for example wouldn't make any difference and still see 20 damage per attack just like fighting scout ship with 0 defense thanks to damage cap.. Population is better defense.. But I might very well drop population although soon because cloak seem is the best first line of defense. In fact, I haven't had any of my planets conquered since I first played GL last May.. Some of them did get discovered however when I had low cloak. +500 cloak is awesome defense (modified to +1k bigger). 2 players did attack my oceanic planet (last month I think) but my high population stopped them short so I set up traps to discover who did and good enough they did attack again giving me great pleasure to royally rape their ships inside out. No one hacks me (I would welcome hacking on me so I can have good reason to fight back much harder but they knew they won't cuz they simply fear my combat. ) so I don't even worry about defense at all. Only way they can find my planets are via high level scanning..

I do have attack/defense on all planets but only from artifacts alone. I get full set of all artifact shipment planetary structures and put them on each new planet I find via alien charts every 4 ranks (I don't do scan anymore for long time as I get too many charts. I have 14 surplus right now waiting to be used when I hit 386.. I bet it would grow to 20+ by then). I start am able to put all size 1: defense: 100, cloak: 90 (my favorite structure) on every planet as line of defense along with +500 cloak.

And this may be over simplistic, but at your rank, if you get purgers so much, then a planet getting stolen every now and again constitutes how great of a loss? Yes, protect a dyson or ultra rare, but seriously, someone steals one of my very massive gases, enjoy... Im not going to build defense on it when if someone reaaally wanted it, they would get it no matter what. So go ahead. Until then, I'll reap max resources. I am in total agreement not to bother with atk/def buildings other than passive and artifact induced enhancements.

~ D

Yeah exactly. Regular planets are whatever, I'd rather get more resources. I had forgotten the bonus, so yeah:

Spy Uplink Chassis x2 = 160 cloak with bonus, for 2 space (+research), and only if planet has decent research
Anti-Tachyon Satellites x1 = 1000 cloak with bonus, 6 space.

1000 cloak blocks most people that are still able to scan I think, or at least really makes it unlikely to find it. I'd just put these on really large planets that I care about, but not one that I can replace with a random planet from the list. Other defensive structures except maybe population on a really important planet, are worthless. I usually respond with traps or sentries which are more efficient. The problem is there isn't a good way to protect a planet without making it worthless in terms of resources (the space used for defenses isn't usually worth it).

I don't disagree with this, I only put defense on as it reduces the chance of being conquered via invasion. I figure a building for defense, 2 phase cutters for attack are my invasion insurance. I've failed invasions on planets with no attack/defense and I'm level 180+ so a figure a couple of attack and defense points may help.

I don't think it helps much; there's always 5 or 10% failure even with no defense (it tells you I think your % when you fail). Unless we had some evidence of the % with certain att/def stats on both sides, I can't say how effective it is but I think for the space the % reduction isn't good. If you cloak it well tho you may never have to find out.

Like I said before. I own about 95% of all rare+ planets so they all are worth to have some kind of protection. Of course, I won't put any cloak or pop on any junk planets but problem is that I definitely have zero junk planets.. Even toxic planets (labelled as uncommon) are all 15x for me and it's not a junk.. I definitely have NO gas planets at all. They suck..

There is the problem with the game. You have 392 found planets and 96 colonized and you say that 95% of those are rare or better. And you have NO gas planets at al because they suck. Well let me tell you how a "new" player stands. Out of my 181 planets I have 10 rares or better. And that number will grow using quests (hence in a forced manner) to maximum 23. Do you see any disparity ? Oh and basically all my research planets are gas. Please don't tell me that there is skill involved.

There is a TON of star chart purgers involved.

And a lot of GP to abandon crappy planets when better are found.

Oh don't worry I would pay double. The main problem is I hardly can find anything proper to colonize in the first place : (