As of right now I don't think there is a wiki page for autoranking. I'm happy to make one, but I thought I'd just post up a quick thread before doing so to make sure that all of the relevant points get on there.

So! What is important to autoranking?

pros and cons

feel free to add/update:
Pros:
Player advance faster in ranks and can spend more energy hunting NPCs = NPC dropped artifacts
Some medal achievements.
Better chance at scanning (based on lower number of planet in planet list)
Possible higher benefit from SSB due damage cap.

Cons:
Lower AP production in shorter time = less bracket and xcells and smaller crew due less prisoners from AP
Less planets capture/colonize compare to rank
Potential autoranking out of NPC game content.
Dan!

Pros:
Legion missions involving NPC's, usealy takes me 15-30K energy to hunt down the 10 Galakis Pirate, 10 Siladon Mine, 10 Crimson Sniper Drone, and 10 Xathe Vortex Entity needed to complet certain Legion missions, without autoranking you will need a lot of energy refills for that
(rewards from this is, Galakis Pirate Ray (size 18, attack 300), Sniper Drone (size 25, Attack +225 Hull +750), T.O. Heliofield
(size 25, Shield +900, shield bonus 5%), Siladon Mine Cores ( size 25, Cloak +300, Energy +150) and Xathe Containment Hold
(size 25, Hull +600, Shield +600, Energy +180) once you get them fully upgraded to +200%)


Season NPC's, again these are quite hard to find unless you are willing to gain a few ranks hunting for them.....
and the drop chance for the special ship systems you get from them is only around 25%, so you might need to find and kill a few of the special season elites if you want a full set for your ship
(rewards include, Zebeeren's Cannon (size 15, Attack +110), Q-Pedd Assembly Line (size 15, energy +50, hull 350 and Activated Ability (gives +2 Scientists every 20 hours if you activade it)) Lepus Revealer (size 25, scan 60, attack 50) and a few more + colony structures)

here's a good lead in page that you can link from:

http://galaxylegion.com/wiki/index.php/ ... ast_Ranker

Wandus also posted these in another topic:

Well pre-autoranking you need to fast rank and the reason is this: to maximize AP which will *enable* autoranking, you need to get as many decent AP planets as possible which means slots which means rank. The second thing you need is high scan tech to increase your threshold, but with an energy focus at some threshold you can get purgers frequently (that is harder now until you autorank as the XP is almost nothing on it). It is cyclic; high AP = more purgers = more chances to find AP planets. The key is really putting all 5 rank points into energy when possible, and having enough prisoners from AP to boost energy or attack depending on the situation. If you can autorank from npcs, increase attack power to maximize effort; otherwise, maximize energy. Until you reach a critical growth threshold from your own AP planets, a high ranked AP base may be your best bet, but even 72k/day AP (about as high as it gets) is only about 3k/hr. Every 4k/hr AP is about 1 of every item per day. Depending on how picky you are, 1-3% of planet scans are going to be colonizable AP planets. You don't really get purger momentum from AP until about 30k+ AP/hr, and then it becomes much easier to close the energy gap and autorank (due to increased prisoners/day and purgers/day from AP for more AP planets). Once you can autorank you can grind purgers regardless of the low XP, further increasing the effect.

The critical parts here are (1) always gain enough ranks to be able to colonize, (2) be in a legion with high AP base and/or decent AP planet alerts coming, (3) find ways to maximize your growth of scans or number of purgers; it is all about AP planets. This is for absolute ship growth; I am not going to discuss in terms of relative ship power vs. other ships or pvp as that's the focus of the slow ranker and plenty of posts exist on that. The fast ranker will get beat up in pvp, but will in absolute terms grow faster and reach autoranking potential sooner. It completely depends on your goals. Grinding NPCs will also provide perm. RP boost to ship and planet upgrades quicker which helps with existing planets.