Pilot's Fed. Promotion to Elite - Via Odyssey On-Foot Kills?

Comandante

Comandante
Dear CMDRs,

I haven't shot a single ship since Odyssey launched; yet I've noticed my ship Combat rank going slowly up, originally from about 15% Deadly (when I was in Horizons at the start of EDO launch).

The other night I get a message, "Promotion to Elite" - and, sure enough, my rank (since Odyssey) has gone from Deadly to Elite.

This is mainly down to the number of on-foot kills I've made. I've logged in to EDH and can confirm my rank there is also Elite.

So the question is: Is this right? Are we meant to get ship Combat points/experience for killing on-foot combatants? And has anyone else experienced this?

I tried searching for a bug but my search-fu might be flawed.
 

Diwrnach

Diwrnach
Your combat rank increases for on-foot kills at settlements as it isn't mercenary work. Your mercenary rank increases only if you're hired as a mercenary in on-foot CZs. I don't think it's a bug and it's probably too late to change it now even if it is (not that it would stop them).
 

Comandante

Comandante
Diwrnach said:
Your combat rank increases for on-foot kills at settlements as it isn't mercenary work. Your mercenary rank increases only if you're hired as a mercenary in on-foot CZs. I don't think it's a bug and it's probably too late to change it now even if it is (not that it would stop them).
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That's odd, because my Mercenary rank increases for Settlement Raid and Scavenger missions.

So not sure that the statement about increasing mercenary rank is correct. I've only done maybe 20 on-foot CZs and am already Gunslinger...
 

MVBanks

MVBanks
I can also confirm - now I'm Elite I rank earned for on-foot activities.
And my Mercenary rank is Warrior - for Settlement Raid. I've done small number of CZ, and I received message about promotion to Warrior during Settlement Raid missions.
 

Comandante

Comandante
MVBanks said:
I can also confirm - now I'm Elite I rank earned for on-foot activities.
And my Mercenary rank is Warrior - for Settlement Raid. I've done small number of CZ, and I received message about promotion to Warrior during Settlement Raid missions.
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OK thanks, I'll try again and see if I can find an existing bug report; if not I'll submit a new one.

I'd rather have my rank set back to what it was and actually earn it!
 

Diwrnach

Diwrnach
MVBanks said:
I can also confirm - now I'm Elite I rank earned for on-foot activities.
And my Mercenary rank is Warrior - for Settlement Raid. I've done small number of CZ, and I received message about promotion to Warrior during Settlement Raid missions.
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That is odd. I was confused as to why my combat rank was increasing so I did some extensive testing and discovered that mercenary rank only increased with CZs and combat rank increased for other ground-based activity so your Warrior promotion lies outside the curve. Maybe a dev can shed some light as to what the situation is regarding rank progression.
 

Frop

Frop
Diwrnach said:
That is odd. I was confused as to why my combat rank was increasing so I did some extensive testing and discovered that mercenary rank only increased with CZs and combat rank increased for other ground-based activity so your Warrior promotion lies outside the curve. Maybe a dev can shed some light as to what the situation is regarding rank progression.
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There was a thread a while back where people were comparing Mercenary (and Combat) rank increases. It turned out that at that point in time (around Update 3/4 if I remember correctly) rank progression varied wildly between players. For instance some registered fairly rapid progression for killing NPCs, doing missions and participating in CZs, where others (myself included) only saw progression while doing CZs (and a lot less at that). There were also one or two players who basically didn't see any progression at all, regardless of their activities.

Pretty soon after that FDev boosted rank progression in one of their updates or patches, which didn't really fix the (suspected) issues, but just made sure that everybody started seeing progress anyway. I think in the first two months of playing I went from 0% Combat Elite to 2% Combat Elite, after the patch I went from 2% to 14% in less than two weeks.
 
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Sighman

Sighman
My merc rank increases with settlement combat. (Can confirm as my account is linked to inara, and the percentage shows there.)

It could be related to the rank of the NPCs you're killing though. Most of the scavs I encounter are low-grade, whereas I only do high CZ with much higher level enemies. If it's like ship combat, one of those kills is worth about ten bases full of scavs.
 

Koben

Koben
I've been killing bigger Thargoids left and right to get my combat rank to Elite I and it barely moved a pixel... maybe I should just go guns blazing on foot. :/
 

Frop

Frop
Koben said:
I've been killing bigger Thargoids left and right to get my combat rank to Elite I and it barely moved a pixel... maybe I should just go guns blazing on foot. :/
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It took me about 7K combat bonds and 5K bounties to get to Combat Elite back in the day, based on my increase in Combat rank since OD (and the buff patch) I'd wager that on-foot kills will get you there a lot quicker.
 

Northpin

Northpin
I can confirm too, but i thought it was fixed (i did mostly non violent missions for the )
I was dangerous at the start of EDO - now i'm half way to Elite - with minimal CZ done, but a quite amount of settlement and scav massacre.
And i'm also getting ranks as mercenary
 

Sighman

Sighman
Frop said:
It probably is, you can see the biggest increases when slaughtering High Security settlements and fighting in High Intensity CZs.
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I don't look at the settlement security when I take scav missions, and I don't slaughter lawful bases. (Do scav missions even have a security rating? They all seem to go down like ninepins in my game.)

Therefore, any large gains in my Merc rank are much more likely to come from high CZ than settlement combat.
 

Frop

Frop
Sighman said:
I don't slaughter lawful bases.
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I don't really set out do that either, but sometimes stealth goes awry and things happen. Then again, a lot of those "lawful" bases have all kinds of illegal substances stored, so maybe they're not as legit as we think. You'll also find random personnel carrying bounties and being labeled as "criminals" by the game.
 

MVBanks

MVBanks
Frop said:
It probably is, you can see the biggest increases when slaughtering High Security settlements and fighting in High Intensity CZs.
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I think you might be onto something here.
I've found good settlement to practice combat skills - large military, high security, anarchy (non-player) faction, 22 members, 19 soldiers. And possible to stack missions -
one settlement raid + 4 - 5 raid missions, no need to search around 'cause target faction have only this one settlement. I practiced to defeat them from SRV, on-foot stealth,
on-foot open fight (in case I receive "tipped off" message). I defeated them many times and this must be the reason why my rank increased to warrior surprisingly fast.
And maybe - just maybe - when stacking 6 missions - does it counts one kill as 6?
Would be good if FDev explain this things - there's no reason to keep it as a secret.
 
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