From ZERO to CUTTER? in one go...

Cogratulations OP. I have a challenge for you now. Sell all non-imperial ships you own and from now on, only fly Imperial ships.
 
Sell my DBX? And my Python? And Asp? Ok, I could suffer the Asp... But Python? o_O I wish there was Imperial M-pad ship out there. Maybe then I'll be brave enough for the challenge.
 
The honest truth about ships, especially the big 3, is that the initial cost can be managed fairly quickly by just about anyone. The hardest part is the rank grind for Federation and Empire. Most players can afford an Anaconda long before they get the unlocks for the other two.

No, the "real" cost is in upgrading the modules and armor, which can dwarf the cost of the ship by 10x. Busybodies are so up in arms about zero to Conda in a day or two, they forget that the real cost is upgrading. I have a Cutter and a Corvette that are both well over 1b CR spent and they are not yet completely A rated. I have an lifetime average of about 6.6m/hr, and getting those ships upgraded didn't happen quickly.
 
i had zero empire rank before this weekend, went to those two systems with the one port in each and just flew back and forth doing rep missions for about 5 hours. it was honestly utterly boring and tedious. i cannot even begin to imagine how or why anyone thought [insert whatever the original length of time taken to get the ranks here is] is anything other than a ludicrous grind gateway. 5 hours of that is more than enough tbh and i'm amazed the devs are going to (presumably) nerf the current setup.

i'm also baffled how we even end up at this point. how did the devs manage to split rewards into 3 chunks but not realise how much rep missions would give? and more importantly, how will rep as an option on the payment screen once the nerf is applied feel like any sort of reward anymore? all we're really going to be left with is 2 viable options as opposed 3. well whatever, i'll be saving up for the biggest empire ship but for now i'm happy flying around in the clipper. they should just leave it as is, or make some actual faction specific missions to rank up instead of "here's the exact same mission but with the word navy bolted on". it feels very placeholder.
 
You can bypass rank and money, but then dont blame game after 20h of gameplay there is nothing to do. Because getting that is huge part of game. Saddly.
 
You can bypass rank and money, but then dont blame game after 20h of gameplay there is nothing to do. Because getting that is huge part of game. Saddly.

i mean, they're just more ships. gating more things to fly and more playstyles associated with ship setups that most people will never see seems bizarre to me. i've got 1000+ hours ingame and loving the clipper. and even if i buy the cutter tomorrow (can't, need another 100 mil) it'll still be an age before i can mod it up.
 

sollisb

Banned
You can bypass rank and money, but then dont blame game after 20h of gameplay there is nothing to do. Because getting that is huge part of game. Saddly.

Nah :D My game only got good after I had my first Vette. Now with multiple accounts, about 5 Cutters and 2 Vettes later, (Don;t know how many Condas) I still find lots to do :D Saturday & Sunday I was hauling for the Wing Missions and giving credits away. Today, I took a trip around the Nebulae. For the rest of the week, I'll continue that. Then next weekend will do the CG if it's half decent, else I'll find something else.

There's alots to do, if you ignore the FDev crap they throw at us, and do it the Braben way.. Find your own trail... I have around 50W in game and still going strong.
 
Nah :D My game only got good after I had my first Vette. Now with multiple accounts, about 5 Cutters and 2 Vettes later, (Don;t know how many Condas) I still find lots to do :D Saturday & Sunday I was hauling for the Wing Missions and giving credits away. Today, I took a trip around the Nebulae. For the rest of the week, I'll continue that. Then next weekend will do the CG if it's half decent, else I'll find something else.

Yes, I find I'm still busy in my cutter doing bgs and powerplay hauling. powerplay may get stale eventually but I seem to be motivated enough by it for now. Well now with the improved T-9 and T-10 cargo hauling is a bit safer and feasible for trading or powerplay ferrying. I also fly my cutter pretending it's like a smaller "star trek" like ship, or a warship in a CZ along with fighters. Plus the big three make good multicrew-host ship and wing mission ships.
 
So I went out there and jumped from 43% baron to 100% viscount on the first run. Kind of surprised, since I've been baron forever (2 years?).

Is it bugged? Or did they just radically lower rank requirements?
 
It's now much easier to gain Navy ranks yep, both Imperial and Federal.

Whether this is working as intended or not, no-one knows. Fdev have been tight-lipped on the matter.

Wouldn't surprise me if it gets a visit in the middle of the night from the spec-ops stealth-nerfbat in the upcoming 3.0.3 patch.
 
I didn't do it in one go, but over the course of the weekend I did work my way up to the illustrious Empire rank of Duke, and I had just enough credits in my bank to buy me one of these, my first ever Imperial Cutter:

p1GxE4B.jpg



I can't afford to fit it out for combat yet, but I was able to fit it decently for unarmed trading. The Cutter flies much nicer than I expected it to, and man does she make some beautiful noises as she runs along! As a 704T cargo ship it's a fun vessel to do trade runs with.
 
The honest truth about ships, especially the big 3, is that the initial cost can be managed fairly quickly by just about anyone. The hardest part is the rank grind for Federation and Empire. Most players can afford an Anaconda long before they get the unlocks for the other two.

No, the "real" cost is in upgrading the modules and armor, which can dwarf the cost of the ship by 10x. Busybodies are so up in arms about zero to Conda in a day or two, they forget that the real cost is upgrading. I have a Cutter and a Corvette that are both well over 1b CR spent and they are not yet completely A rated. I have an lifetime average of about 6.6m/hr, and getting those ships upgraded didn't happen quickly.

Although I can agree with above, red part is not a big problem anymore. I did whole ranking up from NONE to DUKE during the weekend. Took me about 12 hrs (give or take 2 hrs) as I wasn't in a hurry, I wasn't min-maxing, I was slacking at times and I made a trip to exchange ship. Even though, ~12 hrs to blast through all ranks to unlock Cutter is not long.

Not instant, requires some effort but also not extensively long when whole process is measured in months. And it seems it used to be like that so current change is a welcome one.

About outfitting cost - I have noticed long time ago, default ship price = ~10% of whole A-rated. It's kinda funny that SINGLE module can cost far more than entire ship.



So I went out there and jumped from 43% baron to 100% viscount on the first run. Kind of surprised, since I've been baron forever (2 years?).

Is it bugged? Or did they just radically lower rank requirements?

First, it may indeed been lowered. But also - during your play you may have done missions that granted some rep and it accumulated over the years. So when you started doing ranks up it added up and granted you instant Viscount. Every rep gained after rank up opportunity counts toward next rank. It is technically possible to run rep missions for few days WITHOUT taking rank up missions and then within 1 hr go from NONE to DUKE because you have enough rep amassed.
 
Well I got to King, took around 4 hours from Baron. Each time I got a rank I was already 100% on the next one until Duke (50%). From there it was just another 4 trips or so to King. Even taking into account that it is a very efficient place to get missions, and that you can select rep as your reward, it's a pretty amazing difference over the old system.

If I'd done it the old/hard way I'd be spitting chips seeing rank made this easy, but hey rank means nothing and they'll still execute you for failing to pay a speeding ticket, so who cares.
 
It must be a LOT easier to gain naval rank than it used to be.

I got my Imperial navy rank all in one go, by doing surface-scan missions back when it was "one scan completes all missions".
By the time I got to mid-tier it was taking me ten "runs" to a scan site (each "run" taking around 15 minutes, loaded with 20 rep+++ missions) to complete a rank and, IIRC, the last 2 or 3 ranks took more like 15 runs.
On average, that's probably around 200 rep+++ missions (or 2.5 hours) per rank.

Spent an entire bank-holiday weekend glued to my PC to get it done.
 
I ehard on steam forum the rank progression si going to be nerfed, it indeed seems to be kinda non intended to go that fast. personally I think it's fine, it is a boring grind anyways.
 
Made the ranking up over the weekend too from Master to Prince in two 3-4h play sessions with data delivery missions in Ngalinn <--> Mainani.

One trip takes about 5 minutes, plus another 5 minutes to accept/turn in missions. After each trip I got to 100% of the next rank.
The problem was to find naval rank-up missions for each trip, which isn't always possible (thank to RNGesus), but I got pretty lucky, and got a rank-up mission most of the time.
So it takes about 10 minutes to go from 100% of the lower rank to 100% of the next rank. Pretty crazy.

I actually wanted to stop at Duke, but since I had so much Rep backed-up, the momentum ragged me until 100% Prince, lol.
 
Made the ranking up over the weekend too from Master to Prince in two 3-4h play sessions with data delivery missions in Ngalinn <--> Mainani.

One trip takes about 5 minutes, plus another 5 minutes to accept/turn in missions. After each trip I got to 100% of the next rank.
The problem was to find naval rank-up missions for each trip, which isn't always possible (thank to RNGesus), but I got pretty lucky, and got a rank-up mission most of the time.
So it takes about 10 minutes to go from 100% of the lower rank to 100% of the next rank. Pretty crazy.

I actually wanted to stop at Duke, but since I had so much Rep backed-up, the momentum ragged me until 100% Prince, lol.

Same lol. Why stop at Duke when you can be a king 20 minutes later?
 
Same lol. Why stop at Duke when you can be a king 20 minutes later?

It's what I have recently done, I had already completed the grind to get the Cutter before but took this brief advantageous moment to go on to the end. Unfortunately apart from the title you get nothing for completing it, which is the reason I didn't do it originally. I hadn't fancied doing a few weeks of grind for nothing and I think some/most people won't bother even when the time taken has been cut.
 
It's what I have recently done, I had already completed the grind to get the Cutter before but took this brief advantageous moment to go on to the end. Unfortunately apart from the title you get nothing for completing it, which is the reason I didn't do it originally. I hadn't fancied doing a few weeks of grind for nothing and I think some/most people won't bother even when the time taken has been cut.

Yeah I stopped at baron/clipper because I just couldn't stand the grind. And two years later rank unchanged - so much for the fanboi mantra of 'play your own way and rewards will come'.
 
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