Hey all,

I thought I'd ask your opinion on what to do with planet buildings.

I have the following planets:

1. Massive Gas Giant- Very Abundant Research, no artifacts + mining

2. Very Large Oceanic: Very Rich Artifacts, Abundant Research, Very Sparse Mining

3. Large Desert: Extremely Abundant Artifacts, Very Abundant Research, Sparse Mining

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Right now, I have the following buildings...

Gas Giant: 15 research labs

Oceanic: 10 artifacts, 4 research labs

Desert: 1 mine, 4 artifacts, 7 research labs

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I was wondering whats a good way to maximize the production out of my planets. Should I just put all research labs, or all artifacts, or a mix?

Also, what about the other buildings like defense, cloaks, minefields, etc?

As I'm still under newbie protection, should I just demolish the artifact labs and make everything research labs to try to get as much research done as I can before I lose the newbie protection? Or should I keep the buildings as is, and upgrade to better buildings and with the space saved, put in defenses?

What would you guys do?

For every planet, focus on the one best resource.

1. Only research
2. Only artifacts
3. Only artifacts

Don't really build def/att/cloak on these planets, not worth now, especially when no one can actually attack it yet. Maybe later only build defenses on the oceanic

I would try pretty damn hard to settle a decent mining planet. You can pass up a few nice artifact/research planets if you have to. They probably won't go away if you don't settle them. If they do get happen to get settled by an enemy, they could have just as easily been invaded if you settled them first.

Research is pretty important at earlier levels so I don't see much wrong with how you have the structures. The desert planet could be all research and the oceanic could be all artifacts probably. There's a big difference between very rich and abundant. Once you get a mining planet or two you should probably try to get a few more gas giants and refocus the planets you already have on artifacts... a convenient time would be when you start building better structures anyways.

I'm not really sure what affects invasion success. I build defense structures and a few population structures since they will help exhaust the attackers energy. If I knew which of those two make it harder to invade, I would build just those. Wouldn't worry about it till rank 20.

There's another planet I found...

Very Large Volcanic

Mine: very rich
research: extremely sparse
artifacts: very sparse

Should I take this as my mining planet?

Just asking since I've heard that there is a limit on the planets we can own. I'm a bit confused because when I see the Galaxy Leaders, I see people who have like 300 planets?

There is a limit of 1 + 1/4ranks (so at 8th level you can control 3, at level 32 you can control 9 ect...). There is a chance some of them have massive ranks so they can have a whole lot of planets.

Though I do not know if this includes ones you take control of from other players. If that has a different count (or no count) then that is how they have gotten those high numbers.

YES. I think the best non-rare mining planet is Very large, Extremely rich or Very rich.


This number shows planets found and not owned.

no one has 300 planets...thats planets discovered....you get 1 planet for every 4 levels plus 1 to start with. the highest ranked player is rank 180...i think that comes out to 46 planets. ..you shouldn't take junk planets but very large rich anything is worth it i think and i agree that you should only produce the best resource per planet... i dont take anything less then very abundant...maybe if its very massive, then abundant is ok...also small and tiny are no good planets unless they are pretty mega rich

For a guy still in newbie protection you have REALLY good planets. The best Ive got is an average volcanic that has very abundant mining, and Im rank 36.

I must have beginner's luck.

I just scanned and found:

Average Terran

Rich Mining
Rixh X3 Artifacts
Rich X2 Research

and this one is controlled by a rank 13 player, so I'm hoping to invade this planet once my newbie protection drops.

I also got...

Large Volcanic

Extremely Rich Mining
Extremely Sparse Artifacts + Research

Would 2 mining planets with Very Rich / Extremely Rich be all I need? Or do I need more mining planets? Also, I heard that there's some kind of artifact to hide a planet once I take it and take it off player scan lists? If I take the Terran planet, everybody will probably want this one.

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I had a couple questions.

What happens with the terraforming artifact? Does it raise the "rank" of one resource, or does it do all of them at once? How many "ranks" is raised? 1 level? 2 levels?

Is there an artifact that makes planets bigger? Like enlarging a planet from Large to Very Large?

A TERRA!!!!!! Wow. Yes there is one, it is called planet flux and I think it costs between 2000-4000 points, not sure though. The terraforming artifact increases "rank" of all resources by one, so if you had abundant resources for every resource then you would have very abundant across the board. The hyper-terraformer makes the planet a Exotic planet, I dont know if it increases size though. If yes than it is the only artifact that increases size.

Planet Flux= Deletes the planet for everyone except your's scan lists, dosnt stop anyone from rescanning it though.

Terraforming Device=Increase planetary production of all resources by 1, AKA abundant goes to very abundant. Permanent affect.

Hyper-Terraformer= Turns the planet into an Exotic with a minimum on mega rich X1 in every resource (idk how high it goes up too, mine was X13 everything) and TMK the size is random though I doubt it gets smaller.

Is the Hyper Terraformer the reward for 10 terraform artifacts that someone mentioned earlier, or is it an extreme high level artifact I can get from artifact delivery?

Can this Hyper thing transform a gas giant into Exotic? Since I have a Massive Gas Giant, does this mean I can get Massive Exotic with everything instead of Massive Gas Giant with just research?

Yes, and yes. But its best used on a crappy planet that no one else has scanned, why use a good planet when you can have a good planet and an awesome planet.

I'm a bit confused on which part the "yes" refers to.

How do I obtain the Hyper Terraformer with 10 terraformer artifacts? Can I get a Hyper Terraformer via artifact delivery, or do I have to do missions, thus a very limited number of Hyper Terraformers (and if so, how many can I get max? 1? 2?)

Or is there a way to keep getting them over and over? Sell 10 terraformers? Or something else?

You get the Hyper-Terraformer from a mission called (WARNING: SPOILER) The Terra Project in which you use 1 terraforming device for every time you click "continue mission" and it has 10 parts so you use 10 Terraformers to finish mission which gives you the Hyper-Terraformer as a reward. No you cannot get it from artifact delivery or any means other than the mission.
EDIT: just checked mission and you can only finish the mission once so you can only get one Hyper Terraformer unless you restart. So I would suggest saving it until you find something really suckish to Hyper-Terraform. I wish you could make text entirely black so you could only see it if you highlighted it like in the STO forums. I was goin to do that with the spoiler but it didnt work.

Thanks Robert.

Best to save the Hyper Terraformer for whenever I get another Massive or Colossal planet, then?

No, use it on your most smallest/lousiest planet. And before you use it, make sure you are prepared to keep it safe