Missions required to get rank ups, or is rep sufficient?

[Cougar]

Good morning everyone, quick question, maybe someone knows.

I recently turned in 30m credits from exploration which I spread around Empire systems, and which got me allied with a few minor factions and friendly with the Empire overall.

Afterwards, in my shiny new precious Python, I traded for around 10m profit total in Empire space. At each station, I checked the bulletin board, but no rank ascension missions seemed to show up (or, I could not identify them, but I heard they clearly stand out).

So my question: Is reputation gain from any source sufficient to trigger rank ascension missions, or do I need to actually take part in the mission system first (in which case I would wait until powerplay)?

Thanks in advance for enlightening me.

 

[Brimstone]

Trading and turning in exploration data, bounties, and so on helps but you will need to do some missions AFAIK. I made it to Earl by picking up the data transfer and small cargo transport missions. ALWAYS pick up a slave liberation mission because they have a time limit of 6 days. You can grab a few then just find a place that sells regular slaves and turn them all in at once. The assassination missions can be pretty bugged right now, but eventually(depending on your faction) you may end up killing someone from a different empire faction.

There are more than a few other topics about this, some that I've already gone into more detail so I apologize because I won't do it again here. Take a peek around this forum. Good luck.