Advise on combat ranking

Zer0cool

Z
Hi Cmders

I'm looking for some advise on increasing my combat rank.

Now before you start typing the whole newbie tutorial I know the basics, you have to kill ships ranked the same or higher than you to increase rank, the higher the rank the better the increase.

My rank is currently expert, so currently mid range on the scale where the jumps between ranks are not super huge like Deadly to Elite would be.

Thing is, I just spend 4 hours at a compromised nav beacon killing exclusively deadly and elite ranks ships and ignoring anything else, I recon I must have popped 150 to 200 ships in that time, yet my rank only went from 26% to 28%.

That seems wrong to me??????
 

SciTrekker

SciTrekker
Welcome to the career rank grind. :cool:

All seriousness aside, it may take time to completely and accurately reflect any recent changes to your rank even though one would think it should be instant - at least I think it should be.

It gets worse for the combat rank the higher you get. There was a day when Elite NPC pilots popped up everywhere. These days their sightings by this nearly-combat-Elite Cmdr have been more limited.
 
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JonLuis69

JonLuis69
I think it is borked. I was an hour in a high res, I shot down many, many ships.

Most were above my rank of master and yet...

3% gain.
 

Mohrgan

Mohrgan
Each rank, as you go up, requires more 'points' to gain an increase. You need more kills to move 1% while 'expert', than you did as 'competent'. Could this be an issue of comparing your previous promotions?
 

thirstyfish

thirstyfish
Zer0cool said:
Hi Cmders

I'm looking for some advise on increasing my combat rank.

Now before you start typing the whole newbie tutorial I know the basics, you have to kill ships ranked the same or higher than you to increase rank, the higher the rank the better the increase.

My rank is currently expert, so currently mid range on the scale where the jumps between ranks are not super huge like Deadly to Elite would be.

Thing is, I just spend 4 hours at a compromised nav beacon killing exclusively deadly and elite ranks ships and ignoring anything else, I recon I must have popped 150 to 200 ships in that time, yet my rank only went from 26% to 28%.

That seems wrong to me??????
Click to expand...

Exponential increase. getting to Dangerous is a mere 50% to Elite.
 

Zer0cool

Z
I do understand the higher the rank the greater the requirement, but Expert is pretty low tier, I thought that 2% for over 150 elite ship kills was not normal.
 

Cmdr Nemo

Cmdr Nemo
One gets a variety of points based on the skill level of the victim, that said one needs more point upon each promotion to get to the next. A rule of thumb I go by is pretty close to reality, each progressive step up, requires twice what the previous step up required. Example 100, 200, 400, 800 etc. The same thing goes for the various naval ranking. It's been stated somewhere that if one kills the minimum require skilled pilots it takes 2,500 kills. To get to Elite, If one only kills Elite pilots it takes 1.250 to get to Elite.

Personally, I just kill and let what ever progress I get, considered got. I've no interest nor use in collecting bounties. I just like doing pew pew in the rings amongest the big rocks and or ice chunks. Anyone can kill in open space, between agility and luck, and some skill thrown in, it's a piece of cake. But doing it in the confines of all those chunks of materials takes a lot more skill using one agility and a wee bit of luck thrown in. Besides be a whole lot more fun.
 

Spacecat

Spacecat
When you're lower rank, it doesn't matter as much because half the ships are your rank and above, plus you don't need as many kills. Highres kill stealing from cops or CZs are ok, because you just want to destroy as many ships as quickly as you can. When going for elite, switch to a FAS and do comp. nav beacons and target elite ships. The reason FAS is good for this, is many of the elite ships are Eagles, and chasing around an elite eagle in a Conda or FDL is no fun. Also, if you get bored, build a MC ship and use it some of the time. Having somebody else flying a fighter sometimes makes the grind a bit more fun.
 
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Cmdr Nemo

Cmdr Nemo
Addition to previous post:

The actual ship a victim is flying make no difference in ranking up, the entire criteria is based only on the rank of the pilot killed. Thus an Elite in a sidewinder will get you the same point value as one in a tricked out Conda. But at the Expert level and above, killing a harmless REGARDLESS of what he is in, gets you only the bounty, one gets nothing towards the ranking progress.

At the Master level, killing either a harmless or a mostly harmless gets one nothing but the bounty, and as I stated, nothing toward the Elite goal. And each step up from Master means one more at the bottom they can't kill unless they just need the money, because that's all there gonna get, there's no ranking progress for killing those that are way way way below the higher rated pilot.

As an expert, if I kill a hundred thousand harmless, I may make a lot of money, but my progress to Master won't move a single bit. On the other hand if a harmless rated pilot could manage to kill 1,250 Elites, they might also make some money, but they would be come Elites in the process.

Thus choose your targets wisely, if you see an more experience pilot than youself in a smaller ship, take his asss out. Dam the size of the bounty, your main concern is getting ranked up. The higer ranks get paid more bounties, thus if money is important, the faster one ranks up, the more oportunity to make the big buck is there.
 
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krylite

krylite
I pretty much experienced that type of kind of progression (~ 75-200 ships per % gain in the last ranks ) especially in the CZ's where the ranks of the opponent ships were usually master to elite. My final push to combat elite was mostly in the high rez rings along with a guard fighter. Actually made it to elite ranking while in a multicrew session and two stranger guests were manning my cutter's fighters, while I occasionally did mining in between waiting for the pirates to respawn. My first half year , I wasn't doing pp undermining or cz's really yet, but I'd always tried to face off with pirates who interdicted and hardly ever fought the interdiction. When I got a FGS, I started doing more mining , CZ's, and high res hunting of pirates. Then finally getting a cutter in my second year, i was by then combat-dangerous rank, and did more high rez and cz's occasionally with multicrew, looking forward to collecting bounty from anaconda or dropship pirates as they were worth more credits, until one day I stumbled on the final rank. Python and iClipper, I don't know, I always had bad luck and too many accidents with them, so I soon ditched them after a while and stuck with FGS (/w fighter) until cutter. Overall I have an inordinate number of rebuys, messy and clumsy (keyboard and game-mouse player) , but oh well, I enjoyed it all as I went along.
 
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rrobes

R
Wait till you get to the last rank.

It's everything you've accomplished to get to there, all over.

That's elite rank.

Kill them all, but concentrate on dangerous and above, ship size doesn't matter for the points.
 
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yolomcbobbinz

Y
Spacecat said:
When you're lower rank, it doesn't matter as much because half the ships are your rank and above, plus you don't need as many kills. Highres kill stealing from cops or CZs are ok, because you just want to destroy as many ships as quickly as you can. When going for elite, switch to a FAS and do comp. nav beacons and target elite ships. The reason FAS is good for this, is many of the elite ships are Eagles, and chasing around an elite eagle in a Conda or FDL is no fun. Also, if you get bored, build a MC ship and use it some of the time. Having somebody else flying a fighter sometimes makes the grind a bit more fun.
Click to expand...

But keep in mind crew, and wings lower the experience you gain
 

MarkAusten

MarkAusten
I have to admit that my combat rank of Dangerous is mostly due to outfitting my T9 trade vessel with turreted weapons. Mind you, this was before the engineers came out. In those days it was also virtually impossible for a T9 to evade an interdiction, at least for me, so I would immediately press the zero throttle key once an interdiction started and then boost away as soon as I entered real-space, letting the turrets deal with any targets around me until the FSD cooled down enough to jump out.

It worked well enough to get me the rank I have now, which has not changed since I stopped fitting my trade/exploration ships with weapons, instead preferring to use shielding and speed.

I not sure that this turret method would work now.
 
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