Rank like a pro without coins

The Vanquisher leaves players frustrated with ranking!

Every day people are complaining about ranking fleets on the forums, these complaints center around the time it takes to rank fleets. This ranking issue is going to be painful with the new Vanquisher hull. Due to the health of the ship, there is barely any targets during regular play that give enough VXP to matter one bit. Salvages might give you 2 VXP for the level 75 elites and 100 elites. That has not been tested, but a 71 cargo provides a whopping 1 VXP to the vanquisher. So, many have asked through private messages in game and on Facebook on how I am going to rank and what they can do to ease this frustration.

It might not be the answer people want to hear but as a non-coiner, there are not many options open to us unless we want to spend mind-numbing hours hitting salvages. This option is called build a blank and wait for the VXP weekend and then go with an alarm to get as many hits in as possible. You can use the zombie method (healing the fleet 250 to 500 health total) and smack the target for a couple hundred to 2K at a time. My way, however, is not as time intensive, and I hate spending useless hours at the computer zombifying fleets.

Build Blanks!

First, you need the blank, and most people will say go with Thud 1 and the streamlined hull 3 (grants 25 map speed). These specials are a wise choice to go with, adds about 6 hours to the base hull time, and cost you about 90 min to remove them when you refit. This hull streamline is great with hulls that have very low map speed; If your hull has decent map speed, you can go with just a thud 1, and it is 2 min to add, and three seconds to remove. For me following this advice I will have a Harlock Citadel, 2x Vanquisher, 2x Vendetta ready go for refit. This list also includes the Apollos that I finished throughout the last month that still have a few ranks to go.

Come Friday evening when I get on I launch my fleet to die in the VXP target with a salty dog (use x3 if you have it). You will want a total of 3 to 4 salty dogs for the day of ranking.  These target spawn for 36 hours and you will need to sleep and such so four times max to hit with a salty dog. I will say that if I am using an x3 salty dog, I will load up 50 coins for that 50 min to get the most out of it. If I do not toss in $5 for coins, I can usually get to 70% rank by the end. While legend rank is pretty and final, that last 5% is not so important. I will finish the rank on these ships the following month as I hate hitting cargos.

Zombie!

I mentioned zombie, as I stated it is right around 250 total armor for the fleet. The more health you have, the more VXP, you seem to earn. At least, if this is the same as the previous month, that means that this can be an effective way to rank if you have time to sit and wish to rank while awake for hours. Doing this method last month earned about the same vxp as hitting 25 cargos. So, if this is still viable this weekend, it could be useful if you have the time to spend and do not mind going back and forth to put 30 seconds or so on each ship.

So recap – 

Build a blank with thud one minimum, add streamline hull 3 to add 25 map speed if you hit enough level 40+ cargo (Think that is where it was).

Get 3 to 4 salty dogs to use throughout the 36 hours

Zombie your fleets while you can, it can help you if you have lots of time and absolutely no money. This method is being discussed at being taken away. Use it while you can!

If you want to drop $5 to speed up the process, it is not so bad with no armor, and I would not do it for more than one salty dog run.

The key is to try to rank without costing you a house payment; there is no reason to coin full fleets and then coin the rank for the VXP weekend. If you do not have the money do not worry, instead of four to five ships done you will have two to three.