How exactly is combat rank calculated?

[uncle bulgaria]

Only one I can remember is I hit novice at just over 75 kills, probably 90% nav beacon wanteds plus a handful of pirate interdictors. I've not been in conflict zones yet, I'm staying neutral with regards to the factions for now.

Saying that i've done one federation mission to get to recruit and my recent trading stint has promoted me to friendly with the federation but i've no idea why as I'm only trading with an allied Fed controlled station but not touching missions...

 

[Cathalo]

PvE combat rank will not appear to other players, so you might be elite in PVE but other players will not see it. I think PvP kills are what matters for building elite status to other players, the number of PvP kills a player has vs CMDR's with higher PvP ranking determines this.

 

[Elan]

Only one I can remember is I hit novice at just over 75 kills, probably 90% nav beacon wanteds plus a handful of pirate interdictors. I've not been in conflict zones yet, I'm staying neutral with regards to the factions for now.

Saying that i've done one federation mission to get to recruit and my recent trading stint has promoted me to friendly with the federation but i've no idea why as I'm only trading with an allied Fed controlled station but not touching missions...

Trading, returning bounties, cartographic data and also missions will all contribute to reputation.

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PvE combat rank will not appear to other players, so you might be elite in PVE but other players will not see it. I think PvP kills are what matters for building elite status to other players, the number of PvP kills a player has vs CMDR's with higher PvP ranking determines this.

We're all currently seen as Harmless as there's a bug preventing our ranking from being shown. PVE and PVP ranking are not separate, they all count towards your overall combat rank.

 

[winterknight]

From the non-authoritative answers here it seems the general opinion is that using a weaker ship and taking on higher ranks is the way to go.

Define weaker ship?
If you were in an Eagle, manoeuvrability 9 , and you "killed" a big expensive low manoeuvrability ship without turret weapons, is that good high ranking "kill"? Or is the opposite the true high ranking "kill"?

 

[internal.memory]

I've heard that it's not the number of kills/ships that you kill but instead it's dependent on how much money you make from the kills. So for example (in the theory from what I've read) is that if you kill someone with no bounty then your rank won't increase at all since you get no money from it. If you kill high end bounties, your rank 'should' go up faster.

*Note: Although in theory, killing clean ships won't gain any rank, but I can confirm that killing in warzones will increase your rank (but that also follows the line of earning money/bounty/bonds from each kill).

 

[Romaan]

Your combat status is your combat status. There is not a separate combat status for pve and pvp.

I don't think anyone has an exact calculation. I'm sure Frontier has it and isn't sharing. Many folks believe it's based off this or that... I honestly don't know. I just keep shooting at the biggest ships I can find.

Other things I know 100% to be true:

- Murdering people does not count
- Combat bonds DO count
- All legit bounties DO count

So -- your kill count is (bounties + combat bonds) per the info in your right-hand panel.

 

[Elpapo]

Dangerous - 2300 - 2400 kills
Deadly - 4900-5000 kills

I think I reach Elite in 9200-9500 kills. Atm, i have 7000+ kills. When Sir Barben, in video about Elite prizes, mentioned stats of those who hits elite as firsts, they had 9200+ kills each.

From what i noticed, ships size and its ranks dont matters much in getting next combat rank... Its more about total number of kills wich counts as Combat bonds or claim bounties.

If you only keep killing Elite anacondas instead sidewinders, you get Elite faster, but not by much.

 

[Richard Bentley]

I've just reached Expert at 553 kills.
Novice was 80 and Competent around 230.

 

[n13L5]

Interesting, thanks. I had to go back to the first page of the thread to see what Sandro meant by ships with a higher combat rating/rank. This rather confusingly implies that it is relative ship combat performance that counts, although he is actually quite clear in his first post in the thread that:
-

Your Pilot's Federation Combat Rank increases based on rank disparity

This would lead one to assume that:
a "NOVICE" killing an "ELITE" or "DEADLY" Cobra while flying a Python is counted as a skilled kill, bestowing more brownie points
than that same "NOVICE" killing a "COMPETENT" Anaconda while flying a Viper...


While this thread may qualify as a necro to some, I happened to just be looking for this information, the info seems still relevant and I sure didn't find anything more recent with the backup of developer quotes.


This is what I came up with from scouring Google and this forum, patching together more or less anecdotal evidence:

Combat Ranking
Rank	Points	kills	to kills
Harmless		~ 00 Kills	~ 00 Kills
Mostly Harmless		~ 15 Kills	~ 30 Kills
Novice		~ 75 Kills	~ 100 Kills
Competent		~ 230 Kills	~ 300 Kills
Expert		~ 550 Kills	~ 600 Kills
Master	2,200 points	~ 1,200 Kills	~ 1,300 Kills
Dangerous	3,700 points	~ 2,300 Kills	~ 2,400 Kills
Deadly		~ 4,900 Kills	~ 5,000 Kills
Elite		~ 9,200 Kills	~ 9,500 Kills

 

[CMDR Harada]

This would lead one to assume that:
a "NOVICE" killing an "ELITE" or "DEADLY" Cobra while flying a Python is counted as a skilled kill, bestowing more brownie points
than that same "NOVICE" killing a "COMPETENT" Anaconda while flying a Viper...


While this thread may qualify as a necro to some, I happened to just be looking for this information, the info seems still relevant and I sure didn't find anything more recent with the backup of developer quotes.


This is what I came up with from scouring Google and this forum, patching together more or less anecdotal evidence:

.
So it makes sense that it's kill count, with some type of bonus for extra 'effort' against a more skilled opponent, with another possible bonus for kills wanted in more than one system. I would surmise a RES or CZ ( with CZ leading due to pure target count ) is the best way to go. And picking off eagles/sidewinders, versus 'condas/pythons would work even faster.