My problem with Naval rank progression

[Crashade]

Most of this has probably been said a million times already but I want to give my 2 cents on it.

My situation is that I'm currently flying around in a Viper and have decided that it is time to upgrade. After looking at the different options I fell in love with the imperical courier but there is a slight problem. I started of as neutral with the Empire and no ranks so I started grinding and grinding and grinding until I finaly reached allied status and got my first Naval ascension mission. Now after around 30-35 hours of grinding since I started I am finally getting the mission to Serf. My problem is not that it takes so long to do - that's a design decision but i've earned close to 5.5 million credits doing so which means that I can skip the Courier all together and buy a Vulture, effectively making the Courier useless.

I really hope that it's a priority for Frontier to change this system soon.

 

[KaizoMK]

Most of this has probably been said a million times already but I want to give my 2 cents on it.

My situation is that I'm currently flying around in a Viper and have decided that it is time to upgrade. After looking at the different options I fell in love with the imperical courier but there is a slight problem. I started of as neutral with the Empire and no ranks so I started grinding and grinding and grinding until I finaly reached allied status and got my first Naval ascension mission. Now after around 30-35 hours of grinding since I started I am finally getting the mission to Serf. My problem is not that it takes so long to do - that's a design decision but i've earned close to 5.5 million credits doing so which means that I can skip the Courier all together and buy a Vulture, effectively making the Courier useless.

I really hope that it's a priority for Frontier to change this system soon.

I would take a kitted courier over a stock vulture, from an optimization point of view. But why can't you just try the courier and see if you like it? There's no real rush to get to the next ship....I was stuck on vulture for a while and needed a change of pace, so I traded it in for a courier for a while. Why don't you try the opposite?

 

[Navynuke99]

I'm OK with the Naval progression missions the way they are, and I know I'm probably in the minority here, but bear with me.

Do some reading up on the history and roles of Naval auxiliaries during war time, because that's essentially what is being recreated in game. You're given a conditional commission in the fleet of your choice, to serve at the discretion of the service. The reason for having auxiliaries is to fill in the gaps as needed when the regular fleet can't meet an obligation due to other operational commitments. That means the work us going to be piecemeal, varied, and irregular. Because that's how it has worked in real life.

As for rank advancement, in real life, that's also determined by the needs of the service, as well as dozens of other factors that would take s much longer post to even begin to explain. The biggest takeaways there though are that time, and how much you're trusted are paramount. While games like CoD, BF4 etc tie rank progression to hire many achievements you grind, that's not in any way based on real life.

Do these things make it slightly harder to advance in ranks? Yes. But that's because in real life, it should.

 

[Crashade]

Do these things make it slightly harder to advance in ranks? Yes. But that's because in real life, it should.

I believe that while realism is very important in a game like E, gameplay should still come first. Even though slower progression might be slightly more realistic we shouldn't strive for 100% realism for the same reason we shouldn't have to go to the bathroom in-game.

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E

Meant Elite: Dangerous, damn auto smileys