I, stupidly, boosted my way through the Taltherian chain with GP refills. It means I got to Taltherian in the space of a few hours, but now my ship is terribly lacking in strength. I'm getting disabled almost daily where as before I got disabled just once or twice a week.

Rank 487
3546 Energy (4026 without relays; even higher with Ballistas uninstalled) / 120 Charge
12824 Hull
3865 Shields
Size Class: Colossal Star Destroyer
Space: 3135 / 3135
Attack: 5810
Defense: 9163
Scan: 2107
Cloak: 155
Cargo: 9890.8 / 13110
Upkeep: 3.3B
Taltherian: Urbanize
Excavator: Artifact +10%

9795 Mining
11408 Artifact
8429 Research

Esh, tbh you need more artifact (why you're at talth atm). More attack, better attack modules or more tactical officers.

Exchanging scan for cloak would make less people see you. Also, I don't know if a lot of people have done this but putting your whole ship stats on forum like this makes it quite easy for someone to calculate how much energy they'd need to take you down if they found you.

Otherwise, hunker down, and halc up while adding T.O. and getting lots and lots of helmsman from artifact pull. On top of that, if you're in a decent legion, you might ask them to see if there's some mods that you could take off for better defense or attack. Slow ranking would be what I recommend to recover all the lost things you would've got if you didn't speed rank. Throwing up a halcyon while you at it will leave your ship from being disabled and allow you time to recover. Halcyons are good like that, that's why they're worth mentioning more than once.

One last thing, if you know you're going to speed rank. Slow rank for a bit, get your research pretty good. Basically, prepare so you won't be stuck getting disabled all the time because of your lack of essentials to back up your now bigger ship.

I've currently got 7 defense modules installed and all 8 of my cannons on top of quite a few other weapons which I can post here if you really want a look. Dexter comm'd my ship and said he hit for 157 damage; it'd take 100 shots at that average to take me out. It's generally higher ranks just badging me and it's not like I'm antagonising anybody to make it worth their while to calculate that for a simple BT hit.

Then artifact production and more crew.

No offence but if you have over 10k+ attack, they can take you out with much more energy efficient. Not sure how much attack Dexter have but that's pretty low per hit.

Not stupid at all. I did the same thing, except I used a neural + rsl share to autorank them. The point is you get to uplift your planets sooner, meaning you add more artifact production than had you waited and let the energy recharge naturally.

Don't worry about the ships around you. You will be much farther ahead in a month than you would have had you not finished the chain and soon you'll start to see the increase in artifact production and it's payoff.

If you feel like you have become an easy target, and want to do something about it, you will need to either slow down your ranking a lot, or completely stop ranking for a while until you catch up. The higher your AP, the less time it will take.

Basically you are at a range where really big ships with 30-40k combined strength will hit you. Just hide under halicon traps and do pvp/planet invasion runs. Otherwise just dump everything into tac officers and artifact production. The top researched stuff only add a little attack and defence for a great increase in upkeep. If you slow rank your ship with your new race you will be much stronger in 6 months than it ever would have you stayed around rank 300.

I probably would've still been a Taltherian by this rank if I hadn't done the refills, I would've just been doing it slower and as such pulling in more AP. I got my mission Dyson and Rifted my Nat. Dyson at the same time as speed ranking to Talth so my AP has boosted by 3-4k very quickly. I'm currently working on an Icy planet which will become a 22xMR MC Oceanic; this is also where I intend to put the artifact which gives the Invincible passive ability when I hit two years.

I intend to do the same thing, but I gotta ask, what rank did you start the chain? Did you do anything else in between it? How powerful are the ships hitting you? I gotta be thankful my ship is considerably stronger than your current stats, so that might help, but you speaking of the attacks you're facing gives me second thoughts.

You starting at 230?

Started at rank 400 exactly. The attacks have lessened now. I went almost a week without taking a scratch; was likely just bad luck. I seem to have no trouble engaging in PvP. I did the chain in the space of a day, so nothing was done in between.

maybe some of them had not yet found a talth for first contact, and now that they have it, they are leaving you alone ?

still debating whether or not to do talth all in one swoop, or just proceed normally from r230 and collect NPCs and artis along the way.

I don't think I would've been able to do it slowly. :/ Would've gotten bored. I couldn't even finish the gemini cannon mission without doing PvP and other missions along the way out of boredom.

I must say that when I saw you on my BT while you were doing the chain-mission you were halc'd hence why your ship barely got a scratch for over a week. Just saying.

Well I have to say since the first time I seen your ship many months ago, You have come a long way from then. Your ship has improved in every department since then which is good to see and I can not say a bad thing about your ship, keep up with the good work you have been doing.

I based my statement on the fact that people weren't setting off my Halcyon trap; I also didn't start setting the trap until a few days after starting this thread.