I hit 900 today and haven't seen any topics on auto-ranking for awhile so here ya go.

I was Drannik from early 300s - 875
I am now Konqul and there has not been a noticeable loss in my xp ratio.

Max Energy - 10794
Space: 3104 / 3105
8140 Engineers
3073 Tactical Officers
1716 Helmsmen
6614 Scientists

Unbuffed but including Konqul bonus
Attack: 9433
Defense: 9400
Scan: 3120
Cloak: 431
Upkeep: 4.3B

Attack: 17407 / Defense: 13058 when fighting NPCs
This is with a foci, obelisk, crimson amp, and grid console.

My defense is small but my smaller ship size makes up for it.
I need to repair every 4.5 - 6 minutes
Smaller ship size is annoying but manageable if you don't mind shuffling modules for invasions, base fights, and ect.

Each autorank as Drannik I was able to dump around 3500 energy into missions.
As Konqul it is 3000 - 3500 so the switch was worth it since base fights are easier and Excavator is more beneficial than Explorer

I am no BinaryMan but I will do my best to answer any questions.

Were you able to autorank when you first became Drannik? If so, do you remember how much energy you had at that point?

early 300s when I switched to Drannik
I had 10x my rank and around 40x my rank in buffed attack.
Before the switch I could autorank if there were no chewy elites, after the switch I never had a problem.

Thanks much for the information!

After I switched to Drannik, I noticed I was hitting more often than I expected max dmg per hit on NPCs. It was still beneficial at the time, but now my unbuffed attack has increased substantially.

I recently switched to human for medal purposes and to test something. I was right. I now autorank easier as human than as drannik. Inergon would give me the same result. I suspect it would be slightly harder as konqul, but the difference would be minimal.

Note that I *can* autorank, but I dont do it often. I prefer to keep some balance with my stats. It's nice to have the option though.

Hitting damage cap is nice and all, but the important thing is to reach minimum shots. If you're consistently doing THAT, there's really no reason to go beyond. Take Rogue Data Analyzers for example. They have a damage cap of 500, but a total health of 2800 giving a minshot of 6. As long as you are averaging 467 per shot, you're going to get the best XP ratio. I've not tried Human or Inergon, but Konqul works just fine for me and I suspect would actually be easier to rank on NPCs at higher levels because of the general lack of ranked NPCs. Everything is matched except flamehawks so you need attack to minimize your shot count.

Is auto-ranking with (rank)*10 energy still feasible? I'm currently at 3255 energy, at rank 331. From what I've seen, I'll need about 3600 energy to autorank right now, without being Konqul or Drannik (or Human for that matter).

It is feasible with around (rank)*30 attack but due to irregularities at lower ranks it is best to have at least an extra 500 energy or you will occasionally need to use an energy sac to keep going.
At higher ranks the larger energy bar lets you get a much more consistent 4:1 average.

A few too many Xavox or fab plants can ruin an autorank real fast.
The bigger mission spawned NPCs also ruin autoranking for a few. Namely Dark Iso-Runner, Titancore Proxy, and the Silthion Hybrids.
And then the NPC bosses are an energy sinkhole unless they die before your rank up.

Agree 100%. I've got 10.27x energy as Konqul. I'm currently devoting all my Prisoners to attack for several reasons, but once I get to a certain undetermined as yet point, I'll be switching to a more energy increasing strategy. Right now, I usually donate a few hundred at the end of my bar to my base. Xavox and Prototypes can slow you down because a lot of the time in higher ranked legions, nobody is interested in them and you almost have to beg people to finish them. I haven't started with the Iso-Runners or Proxies, but the Drones were a killer. Also at higher ranks, all the nice easy ranked commons are gone.

I haven't dealt with Iso-Runners sooo
Proxies aren't as bad as hybrids but their debuff will hurt your containment cage supply, especially if you aren't using 8 NPC slots.

Ya, thats what I meant - minimum shots. In any event, you don't hit the dmg cap *all* the time. There is a random component and you can hit for a few dmg less.

The matched NPCs are pretty easy though. They scale, but I've managed to out-scale them so far. They are easier now than 200 levels ago. I think I might eventually kill shadin chargers in 1 shot, though it may take me another 500 ranks. Even the assassins are not as bad as they used to be (to me at least). They're still and will remain under a 4.0 ratio, but it's closer to it than before.

I raise attack through rescued prisoners, and like I said, I've had no trouble keeping up. The few more shots I may need as human or inergon (compared to konqul) are more than offset by the xp/energy gain of those races.

Just for a comparison, Im at rank 809.

Hull 27888 / 27888
Shield 8636 / 8636

Max Energy - 11240
Space: 3902 / 3906
8616 Engineers
4931 Tactical Officers
3145 Helmsmen
6372 Scientists

Attack: 11040
Defense: 15363
Scan: 1705
Cloak: 4292
Cargo: 23722 / 62690
Upkeep: 8.2B

I can spend around 3.5k npcing and the rest on missions to rank up. I dont need to repair at all between ranks ups.

i can speak on those nasty iso runners, they SUCK. even sabbed they take a decent chunk of energy to down.

ugh, I hate them but need them at the same time...