This post is a work in progress. I recently came back to Elite after a long hiatus and decided I needed to get an Imperial Cutter. My Empire rank at the time was Baron 33% and so I had some work to do. 5 days later I am now a Count and have recently been averaging 1 rank per 2 days. I was able to rank up 60% in one day. I will start to experiment with other types of missions and keep adding them to the spreadsheet as I go. This is what I know so far:
1. View attachment 108501 Classified Data Courier. These have been the most beneficial types of missions for me. Giving me 2% minimum and up to 4% at time. I believe I even got 5% one time. There are missions that give as much and sometimes more but are not as plentiful. Fails if scanned or time expires. Occasionally time will expire but they will still pay you to deliver but you will not get any rank progression from it. These can be either based on your Combat rank or your Exploration rank. The ones that have you directly take them to a new station is Exploration rank based. The ones that have you meet someone first then carry to a base are Combat rank based.
2. View attachment 108502 Data Courier. These missions are very plentiful but don't offer much in progression. During my time as Viscount I figured they were offering me 0.25% gain per mission. Fails if time expires.
3. View attachment 108503 Time Courier Mission. These offer big gains. 2%-5% each. They are time specific and require you to be in a certain system during a specific time. They are not very common and I collect them as I find them. While i wait for the cool down, which at times can be hours, I usually do the Classified Data Missions to fill the time. Fails if ship is destroyed.
There seems to be a correlation between the distance traveled in LY's, reward for mission, and complexity of mission. The missions that are far in LY's (not super cruise time. I traveled 150k ls for a mission and did not get any more gain than travelling 400ls) and offer big rewards typically seem to reward better in rank progression. Also the Classified Data Courier missions usually do not give you much time to complete and will fail if you get scanned as opposed to the regular courier missions which normally give you hours to complete and doesn't matter if you get scanned or destroyed.
Charity missions are easy to complete and usually offer a 1% increase in rank progression but are rare in the Empire. Complete them if you see them. They are worth the easy rank gain.
There also seems to be diminishing returns when it comes to missions. Usually the first mission of the day will give me 4%-5% and from there they drop to around a 2% average.
View attachment 108505 Multi-step courier missions offer big financial gain but offer very little in % gain. I have only done 1 and got a 0% return.
Gains change as you rank up, much like the big 3 careers. The higher the rank the lower % per mission. Missions offering less % gain for a Count as opposed to a Baron. Before I started tracking the data it seemed courier mission where giving me 1% every other mission (or 0.5%) but as a Viscount I was only getting 0.25% per mission. I did not find the combat missions worth the time or gain.
Here's the link to the viewable spreadsheet
Proof of rank:
My Strategy
You first need to find a system to get started. I choose to start in systems that have a lot of Empire factions. 3 or more is ideal. The more empire factions that are in the system the better your chances are of getting some of the Classified and Timed Courier missions.
You probably want to be at least friendly with the empire before you begin just so you have a decent chance at getting offered missions. Don't worry so much about being allied because simply working on your rank and doing these missions will get you allied. I went from 60% friendly to 100% allied just by working on my rank. Being allied does help, it gives you access to more missions but it's not a prerequisite to get started.
One thing I would HIGHLY recommend is have a decent rating in the big 3 career choices. If you are just getting started and try to rank up you are going to be severely limited by your mission choices if you don't have a significant rank in the 3 careers. For the courier missions it's a must to have a high level in Exploration. Many of the missions are based on your Elite Rank. I am currently Dangerous, Tycoon, Pathfinder. This has significantly helped me in acquiring missions. Not only missions but higher paying ones that typically offer a rank bonus % over the lower rank missions. i.e. an Aimless mission requirement might not help you as much as an Elite mission.
After you have found a system that works for you gather up as many missions as you can by switching to the different modes. Solo, Private, Open. If your lucky you will get enough missions that you will have to hurry to complete them all. As you complete missions look for others as you go. Usually you can continue to daisy chain missions together by picking 1 or 2 up as you complete one. Be mindful of the time you have to complete the missions. Failing them does not have an adverse effect against you but you obviously lost out on the % gain for that mission by failing them. If you fail one but they offer you a time extension just abandon the mission. You will not get any rank progression by completing a mission that you got a time extension on. If you have to chose between completing one mission and failing another complete the one that offers the bigger financial reward as they generally offer the best rank progression gains.
Lately when choosing mission I have begun to shy away from ground based missions because they take longer to get to those bases and longer to leave. But if you have no other options available to you go ahead and pick one up. Maybe you get lucky on the ground base and find a bunch of space missions. It's happened to me.
It is also important to get to know the systems that are in your farming bubble. Systems that have large super cruise distances are not worth completing missions in. They will take up a huge chunk of time in super cruise. This will cause you to fail other missions. If you jump to a system only to find that you have a long super cruise ahead of you (100k ls+) just abandon the mission and move on the the next one.
Remember on the classified data missions, if you get scanned you will fail the mission. I hope you are good at high speed docking at large stations. With my DBS I am able to boost 3 times toward the station and get through the mail slot. It isn't always pretty but I get in before security can scan me. If you do start to get scanned just try to get through the mail slot AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. If you can get past the air lock before the scan is finished then the scan will stop and your mission(s) won't fail. If you get scanned coming out, boost in a straight line as fast as you can away from the station. Scanners have a certain range and with a fast enough ship it is possible to get out of the scan range before they can complete the scan. So far I have only been successfully scanned once. It caused me to loose 4 missions so just remember. Don't get scanned or you will fail any classified data mission you have.
You will have to deal with interdiction's. Both classified data and courier get tagged as carrying cargo by the NPC's and they will continually harass you and try to pull you over. If it wasn't for the fact that I need to purchase prismatic shields for some of my other ships I would drop allegiance to my Power Play. Being aligned with a power will also increase the amount you get interdicted as you probably already know. So now you have pirates and factions trying to interdict you. Because you will be dealing with large amounts of interdiction's I suggest that you use a highly maneuverable ship. I am currently using the DBS to get my ranking.
Here is my build
It offer's high jump range, very agile to avoid interdiction's but can also pack a decent punch to deal with the pesky NPC's you do decide to fight. I recently added the cargo bay because the easiest and fastest Naval Rank was to take cargo to another station. I will keep it to test the % gain on cargo missions. I don't plan on doing the go fetch materials and bring them back cargo missions because I think that will take too much time, but I will try the ones that give you the cargo to take somewhere else. If I get a good enough return on rank progression I might consider adding more cargo space. (Edit: The cargo missions are worth doing. Many times you can get courier and Cargo missions that go to the same stations, increasing your rank up speed)
The advanced discovery scanner is mainly for the surface missions. It is nearly impossible to find a ground base without actually knowing where it is. The ADS allows me to quickly locate ground bases in systems i do not have the data for. An added bonus is that you get a lot of systems in the empire scanned which may be helpful to you in the future and it also adds a little money to your pocket as you go. I have gained 4% in my exploration rank from this alone. haha.
(provided by Alderius)
Over the last few evenings (maybe 3 or so hours) I've been going point to point doing almost exclusively classified data missions in Empire space. I was about 4% Count when I started, and ended up at 60% after the 3 hours. I noticed that the longer delivery routes (~40ly) gained about 4%, shorter routes down to 2%. I did end up with a few deliveries off the bulletin board to the same location (metals, standard courier etc), so it pays to check them out as often there will be more than one. Occasionally I had to mode switch just to pick up a classified delivery out of a platform (rather than smuggling or whatever), but I didn't "stack" and I just did the delivery in whatever mode I got it in, open/solo/mobius. I don't consider mode switching an exploit just to find a mission seeing as I'm not stacking. Who wants to wait for the refresh? Seems to be the most efficient process, and I just travel wherever the delivery takes me. Made a few charity donations along the way, but not very many showed up.
Other than being interdicted 4 times in one trip by a persistent NPC, ranking this way seems pretty straight forward and not too grindy.
Fly Dangerous!
CMDR Alderius
Cut the Cord Strategy (provided by Braxton)
I got to Duke using ground assault missions initially at cubeo but then at hip 10716. At HIP 10716 there were only two ground assault mission types on offer - "cut the power" (destroy a generator) and "performance review" (kill some skimmers). I'd agree with what deathmagnet said above, that you need decent rank in the three main elite rankings. I missed out on a load of performance review missions because I only had a master combat ranking.
From viscount upwards I tracked the percentage increase per batch of missions and came up with:
On average there were two cut the power missions for every performance review mission. To give an idea of the number of missions required, to get from marquis to duke took 281 CtP and 139 PR missions. To get from about 50% viscount to duke took around 1000 missions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6sBjtEF14s
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10x0VRccxzFMs4VJvouEXSOURxxn-F4hBLhiT54-2GGo/edit
(provided by Fendalton)
Step 1: Go to Cubeo
Step 2: Stack 'Cut the Power' - ' Data Gathering' and 'performance review missions'
Step 3: Relog and repeat step 2
Step 4: To go Metcalf Keep++ and shoot dumbfire missiles at the base so you can land / get the Cut the Power mission done
Step 5: Get in SRV and fly over to get the data mission done
Step 6: Get back into ship and kill yourself to respawn at base (which is why you left the Goliath alive)
Step 7: Hand in, and go back to Step 2
Absolute fastest way.
Charity Strategy (provided by d8veh)
after that, I did charity missions only at Cubeo
50 from Lord to Baron
65 from Baron to Viscount
102 from Viscount to Count
140 from Count to Earl
167 from Earl to marquis
202 from marquis to Duke
205 from Duke to Prince
I didn't count from prince to King, but I'd guess about 240.
Sometimes the spawn of the missions dries right up, so you have to go and do something that encourages them to come back, like a bit of trading or bounty hunting. maybe it was a coincidence, but it seemed to work, though they don't start immediately. They take a bit to wind back up.
You cannot make assumptions about how much each mission contributes as a percentage because it's different for each rank. Also, I'm pretty sure that it varies from one mission to another. As an example, some charity missions only require a 6k donation, while as others require 23K. there's definitely a difference between their contribution to your rank.
OP EDIT: When mode switching for missions, if they begin to dry up, change the order that you mode switch, Instead of going Open, Solo, Private, Open, Solo, Private. Do something like Open, Solo, Private, Solo, Private, Open.... One of my group members noticed a specific pattern in how mode switching effects the missions offered.
Escape Pod Strategy (provided by Udo)
Another profitable option if you are grinding at HIP 10716 are the various planetary search and rescue missions, which are currently giving me about 1% per returned escape pod at Viscount. The nice thing is that you can stack up on escape pods before accepting the missions, and then use your supply to fulfill the missions as they become available. The basic strategy is:
a) Accept an SAR mission from the Nobles of HIP 10716, i.e. the faction that is not aligned with the empire. You will fail this mission, and you do not want to ruin your status with the other faction.
b) If "performance review" missions are available, pick them up as well. You will kill a lot of Sentries while you collect your escape pods, so why not get paid twice for the same amount of work.
c) Launch and start collecting escape pods outside. As long as the SAR mission runs, every planetary POI seems to have a crash site with two or four escape pods in it. Check the video from harliquin76 in this thread, it has some good hints.
d) Some time after you have picked up the first escape pod, you will get a mission failed message. This is normal, you argue with yourself over a beer if this is a bug, or the consequence of violating the "must be returned as swiftly as possible" clause from the mission description. After this, the planetary POI will no longer contain escape pods, so head back to base, clear the failed mission, and cash in the bounties for killing those illegal sentries.
Feel free to repeat steps a) through d) until your cargo hold is full of escape pods.
Now it is time to cash the escape pods in, and there is one important step that you must make, or you will not get the rank increase
1) Accept one(!) SAR mission from one of the empire-aligned factions.
2) Exit starport services to close the bulletin board. This is important, you will not get the rank increase if you skip this step.
3) Selecte starport services again, re-open the bulletin board and complete the mission.
Edit: If there are multiple SAR missions on offer, these need to be handled one at a time, or the second and further missions will not give you rank gain. Accepting mission three even caused mission #1 to fail.
The rank increase does not seem to be connected to the monetary reward from the mission. I just fulfilled about 20 of these mission with rewards between 39k and 195k per mission, and as long as I kept to the accept mission-close BB-open BB-complete mission cycle, I got 1% rank per mission.
Oh, and if somebody is thinking of doing instance changes while in the SRV to maybe re-initialize the planetary POI with a fresh set of escape pods: delta-oscar-november-apostrophe-tango AKA DON'T. There seems to be bug that causes your SRV to be below the surface at a height of -1 meters, and it acts as if it is in a zero-gravity environment. The only way out is the self-destruct function, you will then have the option to rejoin your ship for 0 CR or to go to the free sidewinder. However, your SRV is gone, so you need to buy a new one. This exposes another bug, you cannot simply buy a new SRV for your vehicle bay in outfitting, you need to sell the bay, and then buy a new bay, and then a new SRV.
I did not dare testing if the same bug happens if you change instances while your ship is landed on the planet. I dimly recall reading threads in the bug forum that the results are equally unfunny.
Other Notable Links:
https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=A9190BEC6015D832!160&ithint=file%2cxlsx&app=Excel&authkey=!ALVXKFYCW2NQOf4 (Courtesy of Happyfunball)
1. View attachment 108501 Classified Data Courier. These have been the most beneficial types of missions for me. Giving me 2% minimum and up to 4% at time. I believe I even got 5% one time. There are missions that give as much and sometimes more but are not as plentiful. Fails if scanned or time expires. Occasionally time will expire but they will still pay you to deliver but you will not get any rank progression from it. These can be either based on your Combat rank or your Exploration rank. The ones that have you directly take them to a new station is Exploration rank based. The ones that have you meet someone first then carry to a base are Combat rank based.
2. View attachment 108502 Data Courier. These missions are very plentiful but don't offer much in progression. During my time as Viscount I figured they were offering me 0.25% gain per mission. Fails if time expires.
3. View attachment 108503 Time Courier Mission. These offer big gains. 2%-5% each. They are time specific and require you to be in a certain system during a specific time. They are not very common and I collect them as I find them. While i wait for the cool down, which at times can be hours, I usually do the Classified Data Missions to fill the time. Fails if ship is destroyed.
There seems to be a correlation between the distance traveled in LY's, reward for mission, and complexity of mission. The missions that are far in LY's (not super cruise time. I traveled 150k ls for a mission and did not get any more gain than travelling 400ls) and offer big rewards typically seem to reward better in rank progression. Also the Classified Data Courier missions usually do not give you much time to complete and will fail if you get scanned as opposed to the regular courier missions which normally give you hours to complete and doesn't matter if you get scanned or destroyed.
Charity missions are easy to complete and usually offer a 1% increase in rank progression but are rare in the Empire. Complete them if you see them. They are worth the easy rank gain.
There also seems to be diminishing returns when it comes to missions. Usually the first mission of the day will give me 4%-5% and from there they drop to around a 2% average.
View attachment 108505 Multi-step courier missions offer big financial gain but offer very little in % gain. I have only done 1 and got a 0% return.
Gains change as you rank up, much like the big 3 careers. The higher the rank the lower % per mission. Missions offering less % gain for a Count as opposed to a Baron. Before I started tracking the data it seemed courier mission where giving me 1% every other mission (or 0.5%) but as a Viscount I was only getting 0.25% per mission. I did not find the combat missions worth the time or gain.
Here's the link to the viewable spreadsheet
Proof of rank:
My Strategy
You first need to find a system to get started. I choose to start in systems that have a lot of Empire factions. 3 or more is ideal. The more empire factions that are in the system the better your chances are of getting some of the Classified and Timed Courier missions.
You probably want to be at least friendly with the empire before you begin just so you have a decent chance at getting offered missions. Don't worry so much about being allied because simply working on your rank and doing these missions will get you allied. I went from 60% friendly to 100% allied just by working on my rank. Being allied does help, it gives you access to more missions but it's not a prerequisite to get started.
One thing I would HIGHLY recommend is have a decent rating in the big 3 career choices. If you are just getting started and try to rank up you are going to be severely limited by your mission choices if you don't have a significant rank in the 3 careers. For the courier missions it's a must to have a high level in Exploration. Many of the missions are based on your Elite Rank. I am currently Dangerous, Tycoon, Pathfinder. This has significantly helped me in acquiring missions. Not only missions but higher paying ones that typically offer a rank bonus % over the lower rank missions. i.e. an Aimless mission requirement might not help you as much as an Elite mission.
After you have found a system that works for you gather up as many missions as you can by switching to the different modes. Solo, Private, Open. If your lucky you will get enough missions that you will have to hurry to complete them all. As you complete missions look for others as you go. Usually you can continue to daisy chain missions together by picking 1 or 2 up as you complete one. Be mindful of the time you have to complete the missions. Failing them does not have an adverse effect against you but you obviously lost out on the % gain for that mission by failing them. If you fail one but they offer you a time extension just abandon the mission. You will not get any rank progression by completing a mission that you got a time extension on. If you have to chose between completing one mission and failing another complete the one that offers the bigger financial reward as they generally offer the best rank progression gains.
Lately when choosing mission I have begun to shy away from ground based missions because they take longer to get to those bases and longer to leave. But if you have no other options available to you go ahead and pick one up. Maybe you get lucky on the ground base and find a bunch of space missions. It's happened to me.
It is also important to get to know the systems that are in your farming bubble. Systems that have large super cruise distances are not worth completing missions in. They will take up a huge chunk of time in super cruise. This will cause you to fail other missions. If you jump to a system only to find that you have a long super cruise ahead of you (100k ls+) just abandon the mission and move on the the next one.
Remember on the classified data missions, if you get scanned you will fail the mission. I hope you are good at high speed docking at large stations. With my DBS I am able to boost 3 times toward the station and get through the mail slot. It isn't always pretty but I get in before security can scan me. If you do start to get scanned just try to get through the mail slot AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. If you can get past the air lock before the scan is finished then the scan will stop and your mission(s) won't fail. If you get scanned coming out, boost in a straight line as fast as you can away from the station. Scanners have a certain range and with a fast enough ship it is possible to get out of the scan range before they can complete the scan. So far I have only been successfully scanned once. It caused me to loose 4 missions so just remember. Don't get scanned or you will fail any classified data mission you have.
You will have to deal with interdiction's. Both classified data and courier get tagged as carrying cargo by the NPC's and they will continually harass you and try to pull you over. If it wasn't for the fact that I need to purchase prismatic shields for some of my other ships I would drop allegiance to my Power Play. Being aligned with a power will also increase the amount you get interdicted as you probably already know. So now you have pirates and factions trying to interdict you. Because you will be dealing with large amounts of interdiction's I suggest that you use a highly maneuverable ship. I am currently using the DBS to get my ranking.
Here is my build
It offer's high jump range, very agile to avoid interdiction's but can also pack a decent punch to deal with the pesky NPC's you do decide to fight. I recently added the cargo bay because the easiest and fastest Naval Rank was to take cargo to another station. I will keep it to test the % gain on cargo missions. I don't plan on doing the go fetch materials and bring them back cargo missions because I think that will take too much time, but I will try the ones that give you the cargo to take somewhere else. If I get a good enough return on rank progression I might consider adding more cargo space. (Edit: The cargo missions are worth doing. Many times you can get courier and Cargo missions that go to the same stations, increasing your rank up speed)
The advanced discovery scanner is mainly for the surface missions. It is nearly impossible to find a ground base without actually knowing where it is. The ADS allows me to quickly locate ground bases in systems i do not have the data for. An added bonus is that you get a lot of systems in the empire scanned which may be helpful to you in the future and it also adds a little money to your pocket as you go. I have gained 4% in my exploration rank from this alone. haha.
(provided by Alderius)
Over the last few evenings (maybe 3 or so hours) I've been going point to point doing almost exclusively classified data missions in Empire space. I was about 4% Count when I started, and ended up at 60% after the 3 hours. I noticed that the longer delivery routes (~40ly) gained about 4%, shorter routes down to 2%. I did end up with a few deliveries off the bulletin board to the same location (metals, standard courier etc), so it pays to check them out as often there will be more than one. Occasionally I had to mode switch just to pick up a classified delivery out of a platform (rather than smuggling or whatever), but I didn't "stack" and I just did the delivery in whatever mode I got it in, open/solo/mobius. I don't consider mode switching an exploit just to find a mission seeing as I'm not stacking. Who wants to wait for the refresh? Seems to be the most efficient process, and I just travel wherever the delivery takes me. Made a few charity donations along the way, but not very many showed up.
Other than being interdicted 4 times in one trip by a persistent NPC, ranking this way seems pretty straight forward and not too grindy.
Fly Dangerous!
CMDR Alderius
Cut the Cord Strategy (provided by Braxton)
I got to Duke using ground assault missions initially at cubeo but then at hip 10716. At HIP 10716 there were only two ground assault mission types on offer - "cut the power" (destroy a generator) and "performance review" (kill some skimmers). I'd agree with what deathmagnet said above, that you need decent rank in the three main elite rankings. I missed out on a load of performance review missions because I only had a master combat ranking.
From viscount upwards I tracked the percentage increase per batch of missions and came up with:
| %age increase per mission | ||
| Cut the Power | Performance Review | |
| viscount | 0.46 | 0.23 |
| count | 0.41 | 0.2 |
| earl | 0.33 | 0.18 |
| marquis | 0.29 | 0.12 |
On average there were two cut the power missions for every performance review mission. To give an idea of the number of missions required, to get from marquis to duke took 281 CtP and 139 PR missions. To get from about 50% viscount to duke took around 1000 missions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6sBjtEF14s
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10x0VRccxzFMs4VJvouEXSOURxxn-F4hBLhiT54-2GGo/edit
(provided by Fendalton)
Step 1: Go to Cubeo
Step 2: Stack 'Cut the Power' - ' Data Gathering' and 'performance review missions'
Step 3: Relog and repeat step 2
Step 4: To go Metcalf Keep++ and shoot dumbfire missiles at the base so you can land / get the Cut the Power mission done
Step 5: Get in SRV and fly over to get the data mission done
Step 6: Get back into ship and kill yourself to respawn at base (which is why you left the Goliath alive)
Step 7: Hand in, and go back to Step 2
Absolute fastest way.
Charity Strategy (provided by d8veh)
after that, I did charity missions only at Cubeo
50 from Lord to Baron
65 from Baron to Viscount
102 from Viscount to Count
140 from Count to Earl
167 from Earl to marquis
202 from marquis to Duke
205 from Duke to Prince
I didn't count from prince to King, but I'd guess about 240.
Sometimes the spawn of the missions dries right up, so you have to go and do something that encourages them to come back, like a bit of trading or bounty hunting. maybe it was a coincidence, but it seemed to work, though they don't start immediately. They take a bit to wind back up.
You cannot make assumptions about how much each mission contributes as a percentage because it's different for each rank. Also, I'm pretty sure that it varies from one mission to another. As an example, some charity missions only require a 6k donation, while as others require 23K. there's definitely a difference between their contribution to your rank.
OP EDIT: When mode switching for missions, if they begin to dry up, change the order that you mode switch, Instead of going Open, Solo, Private, Open, Solo, Private. Do something like Open, Solo, Private, Solo, Private, Open.... One of my group members noticed a specific pattern in how mode switching effects the missions offered.
Escape Pod Strategy (provided by Udo)
Another profitable option if you are grinding at HIP 10716 are the various planetary search and rescue missions, which are currently giving me about 1% per returned escape pod at Viscount. The nice thing is that you can stack up on escape pods before accepting the missions, and then use your supply to fulfill the missions as they become available. The basic strategy is:
a) Accept an SAR mission from the Nobles of HIP 10716, i.e. the faction that is not aligned with the empire. You will fail this mission, and you do not want to ruin your status with the other faction.
b) If "performance review" missions are available, pick them up as well. You will kill a lot of Sentries while you collect your escape pods, so why not get paid twice for the same amount of work.
c) Launch and start collecting escape pods outside. As long as the SAR mission runs, every planetary POI seems to have a crash site with two or four escape pods in it. Check the video from harliquin76 in this thread, it has some good hints.
d) Some time after you have picked up the first escape pod, you will get a mission failed message. This is normal, you argue with yourself over a beer if this is a bug, or the consequence of violating the "must be returned as swiftly as possible" clause from the mission description. After this, the planetary POI will no longer contain escape pods, so head back to base, clear the failed mission, and cash in the bounties for killing those illegal sentries.
Feel free to repeat steps a) through d) until your cargo hold is full of escape pods.
Now it is time to cash the escape pods in, and there is one important step that you must make, or you will not get the rank increase
1) Accept one(!) SAR mission from one of the empire-aligned factions.
2) Exit starport services to close the bulletin board. This is important, you will not get the rank increase if you skip this step.
3) Selecte starport services again, re-open the bulletin board and complete the mission.
Edit: If there are multiple SAR missions on offer, these need to be handled one at a time, or the second and further missions will not give you rank gain. Accepting mission three even caused mission #1 to fail.
The rank increase does not seem to be connected to the monetary reward from the mission. I just fulfilled about 20 of these mission with rewards between 39k and 195k per mission, and as long as I kept to the accept mission-close BB-open BB-complete mission cycle, I got 1% rank per mission.
Oh, and if somebody is thinking of doing instance changes while in the SRV to maybe re-initialize the planetary POI with a fresh set of escape pods: delta-oscar-november-apostrophe-tango AKA DON'T. There seems to be bug that causes your SRV to be below the surface at a height of -1 meters, and it acts as if it is in a zero-gravity environment. The only way out is the self-destruct function, you will then have the option to rejoin your ship for 0 CR or to go to the free sidewinder. However, your SRV is gone, so you need to buy a new one. This exposes another bug, you cannot simply buy a new SRV for your vehicle bay in outfitting, you need to sell the bay, and then buy a new bay, and then a new SRV.
I did not dare testing if the same bug happens if you change instances while your ship is landed on the planet. I dimly recall reading threads in the bug forum that the results are equally unfunny.
Other Notable Links:
https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=A9190BEC6015D832!160&ithint=file%2cxlsx&app=Excel&authkey=!ALVXKFYCW2NQOf4 (Courtesy of Happyfunball)
Last edited:
