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Guide / Tutorial Yokai's guide to rank progression (reputation) and working around the seeming bugs
- Thread starter Yokai
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Seriously people, please stop coming to this thread saying "this not working baaah". Read the first post (and others), try things and continue trying things ! I mean, I wanted to get to the highest rank in federation but after three weeks of nothing I said it and went to explore some sights 1KLY away. EWasn't meant to be easy or fast. If you're tired of grinding reputation, maybe go Mining or something
If you're going to post here, please be it thanks to the OP because he helped you or constructive disccussion about current mecanism.
I'll state it again : What is written can be false. Let's see why :
When you do a mission for Minor Faction (A), you get good reputation (+A) with them but might decrease reputation with their ennemies (--B). If "A" is aligned with a MAJOR Faction (Alliance, Empire or Federation) you get a fraction of that good reputation with them (+MA). Important note : If "B" is allied with a MAJOR Faction you get decrease rep with that other MAJOR (--MB).
Now, because of that you might hit "Allied" Status with a MAJOR Faction without ever being Allied with MINOR Factions. Just proves you're friendly with a lots. BUT. This also means that as soon as a MAJOR Power thinks you're an Ally, every aligned Minor Faction will TREAT you AS an Ally . They will show green and maybe have "allied" next to their name in screens, but they're in fact NOT. They just give you the respect the higher ups ask them to give. Let's look at Federation : The feds like you, "the dukes of proxima centauri" (random name) are a federal minor faction... Friends of my boss are my friends. Capiche ? But who are you to the Dukes ? No one. Just a green card from fed space. If you want to get cozy in the dukes lounge, you gotta WORK for it. Oh and they'll tell the feds they like you... WHEN THEY DO !
So the fastest way to see where you're at with a faction is to take a random mission, do it and look at the reward charts. It will prompt your REAL Reputation Standing.
Now Rank mission are triggered by three things : Reputation with the MAJOR Faction, Randomness, and Reputation with a bunch of allied minor factions. It means that in my previous example, if both Minor are aligned with the same MAJOR, you are shooting yourself in the foot as you get "+MA and --MA". Remember Reputation decreases faster than it increases !
It is important to note that exploring and trading contributes to reputation (don't know how) and space fights do too. Don't get caught smuggling illegal goods, accidental shots make you lose rep, and most of all DO NOT ATTACK GREEN SHIPS. If you want to rank up, don't try to cash in on bounties placed on your allies. (makes sense not to shoot allies when you think about it... my trail of righteousness might not have been liked by the higher ups...). Every single mistep will cost you fifteen more steps to amend.
TL;DR : Get a faction aligned with the MAJOR Faction you want to get cozy with. Do a mission. Are you Allied at the end of that mission ? Yes ? good, ditch them and seek another Minor Faction to get cozy with. No ? Do missions until you're allied or until your eyes bleed (If your eyes start to bleed take time to think about your life choices). Only the mission reward screen can help you see your REAL Status. Rince and repeat to keep getting Allied with A LOT of Minor Factions. DO NOT DO ILLEGAL THINGS LIKE SHOOTING FRIENDS AND SMUGGLING. SMUGGLING IS BAD. SHOOTING FRIENDS IS FUN.
Eventually a rank up mission will pop out. (Some estimate it takes 15-20 minor factions being allied to you to get to highest rank)
That all makes sense, but still doesn't help. I mean how hard is it for the devs to show both the actual minor faction rep (the useful info) as well as the apparent rep(i.e. what the Empire/Fed tells them to think).
Hunting around 20 factions, many with the same name, is a serious game-play bore. I don't mind the grind, as long as it is doing something towards my aims.
Three weeks at Lord, all systems showing "Allied", not one naval mission - about to give up - there are lots of games with good game-play waiting.
I think I've also hit the reputation cap, but I'm only at squire. I'm gonna probably abandon some missions to lower my rep, complete some to continue building it. I'll post whatever happens here. I'm pretty confident that rep isn't actually what affects getting ascension missions, it's either just completing missions (but that seems unlikely, what about bounty hunters and warzoners?) or actually building rep, e.g, it doesn't matter what your reputation is, it just matters how much you increase it. Being allied and increasing your rep a certain amount seems to get you a mission just as quickly as being at neutral and increasing rep that same amount does. We'll see...
YES! After two weeks (aporx) I just earned a new Fed Mission.
So, more than ever I think the problem is not so much on the mechanism of earning points/rep, although I continue to have some doubts related to the inner formula because I doesn't completely understand the numbers. I think that the problem is more related to the information provided to the pilots: I think it's not good enough, you really doesn't have a clear, way to check your advancement, so it can became frustrating to try to do things with this lack of feedback. Sorry, but in my opinion the solution used right now for providing information lacks clarity. Hopefully the devs are aware and can provide us we a nice, elegant, revamped mission system, including the information provied through the reputation and influence over factions.
Related to the issue of OP and the rankings, I will continue his good advices, doing missions for the minor factions, because at same indefined moment of the future, for sure another Fed mission will appear at the board. Simply follow the rules provided at the very first post by Yokai.
So, more than ever I think the problem is not so much on the mechanism of earning points/rep, although I continue to have some doubts related to the inner formula because I doesn't completely understand the numbers. I think that the problem is more related to the information provided to the pilots: I think it's not good enough, you really doesn't have a clear, way to check your advancement, so it can became frustrating to try to do things with this lack of feedback. Sorry, but in my opinion the solution used right now for providing information lacks clarity. Hopefully the devs are aware and can provide us we a nice, elegant, revamped mission system, including the information provied through the reputation and influence over factions.
Related to the issue of OP and the rankings, I will continue his good advices, doing missions for the minor factions, because at same indefined moment of the future, for sure another Fed mission will appear at the board. Simply follow the rules provided at the very first post by Yokai.
I have been grinding Empire rep this past week and read through every post in this thread. Finally got my Baron mission today, but I'm still not sure if the naval mission offers really depends on your rep with the major faction. Yokai said he was only "Friendly" with Empire the whole time before reaching Baron, but lots of other players including myself have been stuck at much lower ranks even though we are allied with Empire AND every minor faction aligned to Empire. I have checked the so-called "real rep" by doing one mission for each minor faction I came across, and the mission debriefing upon turning in always said I'm already allied with them. Yet there was from time to time some unobtainable missions listed by these "allied" minor factions that were labeled as "This faction does not trust you enough". My guess is right now both the mission debriefing screen and the system panel info are showing the cumulative rep from the major and minor factions, but the real "local rep" which determines mission availability is nowhere to find.
Is the info in the OP still any good? I am Warrant Officer in the Federation and I haven't seen a navy progression mission for quite long although I have been doing fed rep missions. OP mentions we need to do rep missions for minor factions who we are less than allied with to see any substantial increase in rep with the major faction. Problem with this is that I am Allied with ALL minor factions whose allegiance is with Federation. I have far from done missions for all those minor factions, but it seems that I get allied with them automatically because I am allied with Federation. So this info from OP must be out of date. I don't really know what to do now. Any suggestions?
I got to Earl a few days back and I'm now working in Federal space towards Ensign. So far the strategy worked for me. I generally found a cluster of Empire systems with a High Tech, an Agri, several Industrial/Extraction/Refinery and ran all the available missions from any Empire minor factions between them. Because all the minor factions were shown as Allied, I didn't really know when my "local rep" reached plateau. I usually did several round trips and called it a day, then moved on to the next cluster. I have a feeling that the number of missions or the amount of rep you need to progress from Lord to Baron is way more than any other step. I spent about half week going from Lord to Baron, but less than a day for each rank afterwards. Probably also true for Federal ranks.
But now I'm really sick of running these low paid missions all over again for Federation. Can someone prove or disprove if we can get "local rep" by doing bounties?
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Cool thanks, I guess I should just keep running minor fed missions in different clusters then.
Have read the thread up to this point, just have to throw my 0.02 in.
I went from Recruit -> Cadet -> Midshipman all in the span of an hour. Before this I have only done a handful of missions when I first started in early April. For the most part just traded rares and did a little bit of RES bounty hunting with a friend.
Once I learned about the navy rank system, I went to town doing missions. Grinding every chance I got. Started to keep a tally of how many missions I did for what minor faction. On Saturday, in a few hours, I went from Midshipman -> Petty Officer. On Sunday I got to Chief Petty officer pretty quickly. After that it stalled out. Spent most of Sunday doing these missions, I'm guessing at least 30+ for different minor factions. No luck in getting a progression.
Come Monday morning (holiday weekend!), I got a naval progression within 30 or so minutes of logging in. Great! I'm finally going to get that dropship today. Spent all day grinding, literally again 35+ missions. Going around to minor factions that have their allegience to the federation, and doing missions for them until they are Allied with me. Once they are, I move to the next system. So it seems to be totally random. Hopefully I can progress to Ensign today and get the dropship.
My friend on the other hand... He's been doing nothing but RES sites. Handed in so many bounties that the MAJOR faction considers him Allied. Therefore all the minor factions are showing up as Allied for him (Although reading the previous posts this is not true). He could not find a single non-allied minor faction. This was after doing a bunch of missions for minor factions anyways. He only was able to get TWO progression missions the entire weekend. He's still stuck at midshipman.
I suppose that the RNG truly hates his guts. Hopefully all that work will soon come to fruition with a progression opportunity one after another.
It's a little disheartening to read how people allied with 4 minor factions and got up to Ensign. I have worked in so many systems getting the ranking up. I'd visit SOL and check all their allegiences and ranks, and do the missions until they were all allied to me, then moved onto ROSS 148(?) and did those. Then another system that had 3 minor factions there. At minimum I got 9 minor factions allied with me in the last 2 days, and overall probably have about 12-15 allied. Still no Ensign. I guess I should be happy I got this far as some people waited weeks?
okay, ive read this and im still not really getting it. it seems like once ive become allied with the federation im automaticly allied with every single minor faction that belongs to the federation,, ive gone to several federation owned systems and in every single one im already allied with every federation factions.. either im bugged and totally screwed or there is something im not getting on how to rank up. sorry if i seem like a super noob
okay, ive read this and im still not really getting it. it seems like once ive become allied with the federation im automaticly allied with every single minor faction that belongs to the federation,, ive gone to several federation owned systems and in every single one im already allied with every federation factions.. either im bugged and totally screwed or there is something im not getting on how to rank up. sorry if i seem like a super noob
If you read through other posts in this thread you will find a lot of people had the same problem. I think the trigger for naval progression mission is not the reputation with the major faction, but rather the cumulative "local" rep with those minor factions aligned with this major faction. So far most people have agreed that the rep we see in the system panel and upon mission completion is a SUM of major and local rep. For example, you may be neutral with the minor faction at a rep of 0 and allied with the major faction at a rep of 1000, then the minor faction will appear as allied but you can still do a lot of missions for them to further improve your rep. Or, in another case, you may be friendly with both at a rep of 500 but the minor faction will still appear as allied. Yokai was friendly with Empire until he became Baron, so maybe he was like the latter example. Whereas others including me have maxed out our rep with Empire when we were at Knight or lower, probably in a situation like the former one. Right now there is no way in game to tell your actually minor faction rep, so "don't ask questions, just go grind"
Do as many missions as you can for them, and do so for as many different minor factions as you can, and naval progression mission will eventually pop up.I have struggled with this issue and read a lot of different opinions. Yokai thinks it's about your rep with the major faction. Another hypothesis is that it depends on the sheer number of missions you did. Kornelius said only the rep gain missions matter. My take is a combination of the above. The more missions you do for each minor faction, the more local rep you get. Out of all the mission types, rep gain (donation) missions give the highest rep, so focusing on those is the fastest way to progress to the next rank. But you can still do other missions when there is no rep gain mission available and they indeed count. I heard from somewhere that there is even a tiny rep gain every time you accept a mission. In fact my Post Commander mission was triggered after I landed in a new station and took 3 rep gain missions
Some rough data for your reference: I did 10 rep gain missions to progress from Ensign to Lieutenant, 20 rep gain + 1 normal mission from Lieutenant to Lt. Commander, 23 rep gain + 12 normal missions from Lt. Commander to Post Commander.As for why some people will accumulate major faction rep faster than local rep, I have a hypothesis that all types of player actions will contribute to local and major faction rep differently. Perhaps doing missions will primarily improve local rep but add only a little to major rep, while trading/selling exploration data/cashing bounties is the reverse. I thought missions were the least efficient way to make money, so I just sit in one RES and got allied with Fed or Empire within a day, but my local rep was probably still neutral until I started to run missions in a systematic way.
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Hi, Help please!!
Following the general guidance here and being a Paladin to my cause. I have landed at a place I have never been too, done 1 mission and my little mission report gived me a blue up arrow and tells me I'm allied! I am allied with the major faction, is this a bug and how do I tell what my actual local faction rep is? (I did hand in 200k of Major faction Bounties and one Donation mission!)
Any thoughts appreciated.
Following the general guidance here and being a Paladin to my cause. I have landed at a place I have never been too, done 1 mission and my little mission report gived me a blue up arrow and tells me I'm allied! I am allied with the major faction, is this a bug and how do I tell what my actual local faction rep is? (I did hand in 200k of Major faction Bounties and one Donation mission!)
Any thoughts appreciated.
Hello Fellow CMDRs. Ok. I've read and read and looked but, I can't get a complete answer to the question about Naval Progressions. I'm Knight in Empire and can't get another naval progression. One post said to get the minor factions to allied, but every system I go to all the minor Empire factions are allied with me. So then I should be getting another progression, right? I know I'm being a bit impatient but, I've been working my tail off to get them to spawn. I've heard in around 8 to 10 hours you can rank up to Baron, and I've been hustling with everything to get those to happen. Please help.
The clue is that you're not really allied with the minors, just the majors they are affiliated with. This means you now can't see your specific standing with any minors anymore, which is a bit of an annoying thing. Your best bet is to just go somewhere totally brand new and do like 10 or 20 missions for each minor faction and move on. Also check out my quick guide series for rank progression on my channel if you're up to the challenges of doing it the quick way
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