you mean flares, clouders, pyramids, and TMs

Your strategy works well for the beginner in a legion with midranks (or higher) willing to donate such artifacts, but for the "average" beginner, it's really not feasible

Research becomes so meaningless so quickly i would got with arti all the way

24 hours of arti shipments gave me


198 att
330 hull
104 research
87 defence
130 shield

This is before buffs like konq kalvins veloxes etc...

So while research is needed over time arti/h gives you all the research you'll need.

Hey man, I'm zeroing your hacks tomorrow

Are they also finding a way to transfer nergy to you too? With just passive cloak and scan from mission rewards, allies, and tied in with their other ship modules most would run out of energy just trying to debuff them far enough.

The are on the leaderboards, get someone else to debuff them? so easy... if I ever reset or get a friend to play this game I'm doing that for sure

I'd say 100 energy is enough to get their scan and cloak to 1, thats not a lot :p

It seems the view is split almost equally between the 2.

I have been tabulating my ship build helps from the arti drop. I'm in a lvl 8 legion with 20 trade pacts, our average arti drop from the base is around 75k. My hourly is 10k. I am mid-rank, currently 513.

Sunday, I got 2 helmsman, 2 excharge, 3 durtanium brackets. Monday 6 helmsman, 5 xcharge, 8 durtanium brackets, 4 scientists.
Tuesday 1 each of helms and excharge, 3 rescued prisoners. Wed, 4 helms, 3 xcharge, 2 durt, 5 scientist, 1 rescued prisoner.

If I were below rank 300 I could do well on this and use any research for energy and planets, cloak and scan. (If I were getting this from rank 200 I would not have had to research ship mods except for cloak and scan, if I received that amount of those mods before rank 200 I would be invincible! ICBLF ) Mind you, my planets are all upgraded now to 12's and I have 129 of them colonized. When you are a low rank you have a much smaller amount of planets you are able to colonize and your ability to draw from your planets is limited, and most likely a level 8 base is not going to accept you if you are below rank 250.

When I was below rank 300, I had to leave my legion a few times for research. My legion at the time started out with equal shares of mining and research, added some arti, then went completely over to arti. I think we were a level 5 legion when we did go to arti completely. The arti I was getting from my planets and from the legion just didn't net me near enough of the arti I needed to keep my ship intact. In the early days I colonized as many planets as I could. I had the planets, Just not enough useful arti coming from them. I was not getting prisoners every day, I was not getting enough brackets a week to be able to table research on hull modules, Helmsman were a dream at the time and I was using rank points for them. Plus I wanted to research base so I could contribute, researching base was the main reason I did go to other legions for a spell, but I did use some for my ship mods.

I needed credit because I needed the ship mods and to colonize and build planets, I needed arti for missions and it seemed I was always looking for help with these things.

There were people in my legion who were spending money on the game who did get far better arti drops than I did. If you spend a bit of money, you can probably go arti on your ship at lower ranks. If you are trying to play this game with either spending a little once a year or spending nothing, you most definitely need to get your research done because that's the only way you are going to be able to keep your ship up in this game, IMO.

So, I guess it depends if you spend money or not, if you can go with arti early on or not. I'm guessing some of the players in my legion were spending gp on helmsman, brackets and scientists, idk. Then you have to find a level 6 base to accept you, I guess that's easy enough these days. Then you cannot grow with your base, you're still not able to give to the base. Need research for that.

Mining gives EM that is needed for the base and for some missions. You can buy it I suppose if you have credit.

I did notice the high level players 1k and above so far are recommending research first, and the mid-level players are pushing hard for arti. Only 1 high level thus far has recommended arti for beginning and low level players.

907 3 1/2 years -

As lower ranker I was told research out of the gate. Did this. About the 700 mark is when the Artifact planet bandwagon started.

I would have not changed anything. I was done with the research tree by 800.

Tips though. Avoid Sillixx race since it got me in trouble when I had upkeep issues. I had to drop mods. But then Mylarai race saved me on that.

Also if you stocking mining and research planets, the chances of losing those planets to higher ranks are reduced. Since most are after those artifact planets.

Save your Terraformers, crystals for planets once you can defend them. Spend the 50 to get you Exotic and Mission Dyson.

I reckon both are important untill youve finished research
ive been playing for 2 years and have finished researching on hull and almost finished scanners.
and even after youve finished researching you can trade research for creds.
my arti and research is 8.1k
usually from most pulls i get 3 RP

Artifacts are #1 thing needed at any rank period and if anyone else sais otherwise they are wrong. I did not realize this till i was around 450 rank and way behind in arty production. The only problem the lower ranks have is cargo space, but that's solved by more arties:P There is no rush to finish research other then planetary construction early on and scanners later. Set yourself up properly early on with non stop artifact growth and add mining as u go, I suppose u could get a few really good research planets here and there if u wanted to, but no rush. You can get plenty of scientists from arty production. I have switched over many of my plasmas to storage worlds as well as Abandoned a lot of decent ones to make room for more artifact planets. I been done research for over a yr now except for base research of which I finished a bit later. There is no rush for research at all.

Rank 1179 and playing for 2.2 yrs