Galaxy Legion: Xecti Ensconcing Field

Another temporary mission launched today. The reward is an interesting one, to be sure. The mission is the standard 55 xp for 25 energy (which I have come to detest... I've been doing missions with a 2.6:1 ratio instead of a 2.2:1 ratio and the difference in leveling speed is staggering). You have to do that 50 times to get the reward, and you can get the reward 15 times total. The reward is an NPC spawn which drops an item you can use on any planet to give a permanent passive bonus of 80 cloak and 80 defense. If the planet should happen to be unscanned (check with a flux probe) the bonus is doubled up to 160 of each. Do it all 15 times and you're looking at a passive 2400 to cloak and defense before taking legion bonus into account.

That's enough to make a planet really hard to scan on its own. Coupled with a bunch of buildings you can get all the way to undetectable. Even if you're not going to go all the way the extra 2400 passive defense will at least give you a chance of surviving should someone hit the lottery and actually scan your planet. (I constantly live in fear that someone is going to scan my awesome planet, but now it feels like it actually has enough defense to maybe not fall.)

At any rate, I have a planet that is 4 times as good as my second best planet and 10 times as good as my new colonizing options so I have a clear place to use these items. In fact, I already have. I cleared the whole thing out with the aid of a couple energy cubes and buffed up my planet nice and spiffy like. If I didn't have an awesome planet I'm not sure I'd bother with this mission. Sure, you can protect something pretty good, but you can also spend the ~20000 energy someplace else and do this mission when it comes back if you even get a planet you really want to defend.