Galaxy Legion: Xectiphage Tower

Today saw the launch of the next 2-week mission in Galaxy Legion. This mission finally broke the experience ratio pattern that has been true for the last few missions... It's up to 70 experience for 30 energy. This makes it a slighter better experience return on energy investment than has been the case. (2.33 vs 2.20) Unfortunately it has the additional requirement of needing an engineered virus artifact along with the 30 energy. It takes 20 shots to get a reward and you can get the reward 15 times.

The reward itself initially seems really weak. It's a planet building with no production value at all. It is 2 space for 300 defense which is really bad. (You can ultimately research planet buildings which are 1200 defense for the same 2 space.) It also has the added bonus that you get to pick one of three lists of races and then the planet is immune from invasion by those races.

How good is this? Well, the top legion in the game has 60 people in it. 20 of them are in the first list of races. 16 are in the second list of races. 24 are in the third list of races. (The third list also has the two races which get bonuses to invade planets so they're the odds on best choice.) Even still, if someone in that legion finds your planet they can just share it with the rest of their legion and still have a full 60% of their membership capable of invading your planet. If someone really, really wants the planet they can even race change into a different race from the list to take it from you.

In short, this building is terrible when it comes to long-term defense. There are ways around it and it's too weak on its own to justify building.

But what else can be done with it? Well, you could keep them on hand and then when you notice a planet is being attacked you can build it to make it immune from the attacker. He'll still be able to share it but you can be annoying with it... I guess that's something?

Another thing you can do is use it as a temporary defense when you invade a planet. You can prevent the original owner from attacking back which does have some value. Chances are you're going to build a ton of defenses on the planet and then temp flux it away in a week. This building will prevent the original owner from pinging it every week to prevent you from fluxxing it. They could keep sharing it to get someone else to ping it but I bet they get bored in a real hurry.

For that reason alone I think I want to get a couple of these to keep on hand. I can always mylarai extractor them back off once I finish fluxxing them away!


It's a good thing I only want one or two of them because the virus clause is actually a huge problem. You may recall an earlier mission which required 500 flux probes. I still haven't completed that mission. 300 virii sounds easier than 500 flux probes but it turns out you actually get 2 flux probes at a time so these are even harder to get a hold of. I hope I don't want the final reward from this mission chain since it's going to take many months to build up to 300 virii!