I'm rather frustrated with the short duration of the Neural Interface artifacts. Here's what happened.

I got a legion share on a juicy Terran planet, and I'm 2 levels away from being able to invade it. I decide to do an exp blitz. I had 2 Neural Interfaces and 2 Energy Cubes. I burnt all my energy on the best XP / energy missions until I had 0 energy, and uninstalled my 4 relays.

So far, so good.

I switch over to Trade tab to use my first Neural Interface artifact and that 10 minutes should be enough to do everything I need. I then wait for it to activte so I can then use my Energy Cube.

Wait... wait... wait.... the damn blue bar kept filling up repeatedly for 3 minutes. I get pissed and click the Trade tab a few times to get the damn thing to hurry up. Finally the artifact used message pops up. I hurry and click USE next to my first energy cube. Wait... wait.... and more waiting.

I got so pissed, I closed my whole internet browser, reloaded IE, opened FB again, and got into GL. Another 4 minutes used up doing all this. Click the USE button again, and wait... wait... wait... Another coule of minutes.

I switch over to Missions tab to pump up the XP. I do so with the bonus in effect. I level up, then the Neural Interface timer ran out, so I had to sacrifice my 2nd Neural Interface artifact, which I shouldn't have to do normally for a supposedly quick "blitz".

I went through all the crap again with the 2nd Energy Cube. Now I'm sitting at 600 XP from leveling up and being able to conquer that Terran planet. I hope nobody else in the legion guy's alert claims it. That guy only has 20 legion members and still no invasion on that Terra planet after 2 hours.

I think the Neural Interface timer shold be extended to at least 20 minutes minimum, or even 30 minutes for people like me who are stuck on 56k dialup of hell.

Use Google Chrome. Seriously. Scrap Internet Explorer and you won't look back.

Where in the world are you anyways? 56k dialup? Ouch! I have a 13meg ADSL 2+ connection, and I still wish it was faster.

But I agree, i'd like to see the effects of the Neural Interface give a longer benefit. There's been more than a few times where I was close-ish to levellng and decided to use one, only to have the effects run out before i'd actually levelled.

I'm at my mom's summer cottage and she's too cheap to pay $30+ for a cable or DSL. So she uses Netzero dialup. I thought I'd left dialup hell years ago when wireless and DSL were introduced. I'll be back to my lovely fiber optic connection in a few weeks.

Artifacts should last about 30 minutes minimum so it'll give people room to manuever, do strategy, use buffs / de-buffs, etc.

Alright, I'll bend on this one. Neural Interface's effects have been extended to 20 minutes.

Ooh thanks Dan! That's much better. And I can confirm the game indeed says it now lasts 20 minutes.

By the way, could you post about this in the News and Updates section? I know it's minor, but it's still an update, and people are more likely to read in there than they are this thread.