So im rank 17 and these are my stats and research tree
Battles 398 experienced
Player Kills 41
Deaths from players 1
Non player kills 2
Planets Found 39
Planets occupied 5
Planets captured 0
Missions completed 10
Scans preformed 118
Successful hacks 0
Successful raids 0

Size class light frigate
Weapons dominion cannon x 1
Energy none
Sensors None
Hull hardened whipped plating x 4
Shields None
Cloaking None
Defenses None
Combat Rep dangerous


Planets
Emaiourana Oceanic Very Large Artifact extremely abundent (research abundent)
Plougal Gas Very massive research extremely abundent
Melyvi Gas very massive research very abundent
Wrecumarzhur large research rich
Thrisante gas massive research extremely abundent

all planets have little to none defense and all focused on research and i still only have +196 research per hour im lacking behind on my rank research they seem to have microgel armor and i know that is about +30k research points into hull and i am in a legion with a decent bonus to research level 5 base but except for that what am i doing wrong

ty for all replies in advance

they probably have a base that has research maxed out

The question you need to ask is this: how long have they been rank 17?

Im talking about myself etc top of it my stats not being sarcastic please read before answer

Research planetary production buildings then pretty much forget about research. Soon as you have +12 arti buildings abandon all research planets/legions it will disadvantage you from this point on (and you get research androids from arti pulls that over time will give you ridiculously high research)

Use your deck space for scan/cloak or percentage bonus modules like Armoury. Keep your ship small if you like pvp or it will become too easy to kill.

There are a few ways to make a crazy amount of research real cheap.
Sit in a level 6 base and eat research payouts for a few weeks without doing anything. This is what Arturo was saying. Some people have been rank 17 for months so they've collected a lot of research.

You can have a high rank friend who just gives you a nice planet. I've given resets 17x plasmas many times.

Also you can find someone over the rank of 1500 who wants to help you. They can remove all their cloak and scan and let you hack their ship over and over. If you did this to me, I could get you 250,000 research in about 5 minutes.
Do that 2 or 3 times a week no problem.