Rank 230, the beginning of the Taltherian chain. As I just reached it, I've decided that is what I'm going to be doing for the next ~450k energy or so. Because of this, I'd like to post where my ship is at now, and get some thoughts and comments on it. I will post occassional updates up to and including the point at which I become Taltherian. I'm posting the approximate numbers I had at 229 because I changed my build to meet the mission's scan requirement when I hit 230. Let me know what you think!


Rank 229 Konqul Excavator

Energy: 2.4k
Hull: 7.2k
Shield: 1.1k

Attack: 4.5k
Defense: 3.2k
Scan/Cloak: <100 each

Cargo: 6.5k
Upkeep: 800m

Decks: 1313
Engineers: 1050
TO's: 519
Helmsmen: 306
Scientists: 853

Minerals: 3215 units/hour
Artifacts: 7267 points/hour
Research: 2450 research/hour

RESEARCH PROGRESS:
Null Rays 3/3
Wormhole Channeling 1/1
Force Obviation Fields: 1/3 (For obvious enough reasons)
EM Adaptive Materials 3/3
Fermionic Unification 3/3
Quantum Overlays 3/3
Sub-Dimensional Sensors 3/3
Stellar Engineering 3/3
Sub-Quantum Logistics 1/3

THE PLAN:
Finish the Temporal Flux mission chain and the Taltherian mission chain, adding rank points 4 TO's to 1 Engineer and Prisoners 2 TO's to 1 Engineer. Adding decks only from parts vaults, NO ship bots. For research, +12's are next on the list, but I'm wondering if I should research Tachyon Sensors to make the high scan requirements of the later Talth missions more easily attainable.

Any other information you'd need, please ask.

Thoughts?

Have you figured out end deck size?
What's your energy recharge?

End deck size is whatever lazuli parts vaults get me too, I'd like to transition into a complete SSB at the higher ranks (yes, I know it's generally considered a bad idea to do so, but I wanna try it. You can always add more decks, you can never take them away.)

Energy recharge is at 56/hr. I'll go back into researching that after +12's.

Need to get that recharge up. especially with how little energy you are adding.

Hey, nice ship you got there. This will probably be a lot shorter of a post than I would normally make, 'cause there isn't a lot to improve upon.

Firstly, I'd like to congratulate you on your ship's prowess. Whilst there are better ships in your rank range (looks at TBP), your ship is certainly one of the top in our range and I know from a previous encounter that you're ship is powerful in practice too.

Without knowing your ship modules, it's hard to suggest improvements to that. I'm going to guess you are working on your Velox Thrusters, based on the helmsmen/scientist ratio. From the lowish hull though, I'd guess you don't have your Kalvium platings. That's what I'm going to suggest working on after temporal flux chain and the talth chain. That's rather a long way away, mind. The Taltherian chain is going to take most of a year at your recharge rate.

Your artifact production is pretty great, so you're doing good on that front, however, you may wish to start bringing your mining up as ship upgrades (particularly the next relay) are going to get VERY expensive.

Research-wise,+12s are just-about the best move you could make. Tachycon Sensors would certainly help (how is your artifact so high with such low scanning tech? Your scanning modules are considerably behind. I've had far inferior luck with AP planets, and I have the penultimate scanning tier). Normally, I wouldn't recommend going any further in the energy tree, but getting the next relay may be worthwhile if you want to finish the Talth chain before the Bane are back next year.

Thanks for the compliment.

I didn't post modules because I'd already changed them to add the required scan. Velox Thrusters are coming soon, I've got 1 already. Kalvium platings I was considering doing before the Talth chain, and I'm still not sure as of now which I'll do first. I'll decide before I finish the temp flux chain (Octafari Migration 4/10 completed, so I wouldn't be starting from the beginning of the Mylarai chain... Not sure.) Goal for artifact is 8k by rank 250, so I'm getting close to that, then I'll work more on mining.

As for how I got my artifact so high with such poor scanning, I did a considerable amount of trading and was able to buy quite a few good artifact planets. Most of them I didn't scan myself.

There are a lot of missions I personally have slated to do before Taltherian. Aeon Moon, polishing off Trellith (those boosts can make a huge difference), polishing off Mylarai, the Silthion chain (to see the hybrid larva). It's unfortunate, but it will be some time before I even begin Taltherian.

The Silthion chain is another good one too, actually. The hulls are nice and efficient, plus the planets are useful.

Aeon Moon chain I am doing before Taltherian. I'd like to get started on Taltherian as soon as possible, I plan on doing some of the other mission chains directly after.

0exarity is awesome. point made.

-First off, if your doing the Talth chain then start putting all your points into engineers, will save you a lot of time, also since you're powering through it you need to think of strategy of how your going to get your ship back on par after you've finished.
-If I were you I'd swap out defense in favour of attack, energy and hull, and then add in defense when your maxed out in those three.
-Get your research up, your artifact is already high for your level but you've ignored research and mining, not the best idea all, you want to try and get both to 4 or 5k.
-Get energy nullifiers, not big increase in upkeep but a decent enough boost.
-Tachyons would also be a good idea as would kalviums.

I've decided the Taltherian Chain isn't worth it just yet. I'm going to build up a higher base of energy before working on it. I'm going to finish the Aeon moon chain for temp fluxes, then do some more NPC'ing until I have a larger amount of energy.

Good idea and probably for the better as doing the Talth chain so early can really harm your ship.

Meh not really. Only if you go all energy/auto rank to push through it. its something you should chip away at over time.

And energy gets diverted away from ship-building, but yeah chipping away at it would work.

Long run talth is the best energy for ship building.

I will be doing Talth, but just not yet. I'll probably spend a whole lot of time as a Taltherian later on. Until then, Konqul Excavator it stays.