The rancor uses the normal droid and not the prestige droid, so I already have my Rancor at level 10. Gotta say, it's still pretty lame. I did not expect much, since the rancor's have always had very little value before, so I was not expecting much. My droids are idle anyway, so I only had the rancor and my Sentinel left to upgrade and the Sentinel should be at level 50 by year-end.
I am going contrarian on my prestige upgrades, after the initial upgrades. I did the research center, one barracks, and one factory like most people did. After that, I jumped to my turrets and did one more barracks. So far 3 turrets done and working on the 4th now. I held off on the transports with the thought that everyone will work on those early, meaning more troops to defend. The counter to that would be higher grade turrets. The big concern was how this impacted matchmaking.
At the end of the day, I have more control over attacks, so I was less concerned with getting help there. That meant prioritizing defense. The proliferation of dev bases also factored in to the decision.
LS