As for larger universe-wide rewards for BS, we have that: War Convoys. Problem is that their AI is still useless. That ought to be fixed. Something like the unrat AI minus the bribing bit and minus the chasing-through-multiple-sectors bit would be fine.

alloh you have a few flaws here.. first the skyprom has no mission requirement.. second, no one would bother with bs if they could just do the test pilot mission to get the x-1 and skip all the rest... so rather then leave them as they are... just get rid of the test pilot mission all-together and require military rank.

as far as ranks go.. you could simply do it on a border skirmish kill count (bp already has significant awards) ensign when you sign.. 2nd LT at say 50 kills 2nd LT at 50 LT at 100 LT Commander at 500 Commander at 1000.... etc etc

though these numbers should be pretty high, probably much higher then here as ive dont BS where i came out with 300+ casualties regularly

@Endercp12
Read again my post, and Tarenty's above. The idea is, for newcomers, offer lower requirements (licenses) and prices if they join military. For civilians, remain as is. X-1 is another story.

And for promotions, only Lt. should be simple BS kills, others must complete bigger missions and achieve victories! For higher ranking officers is required coordination of BIG battles and teamwork.

hhmmm... Maybe from Captain on the military could receive a few wingmen to fight with, with basic orders (defend/attack/form)! Makes sense to see a Captain/Major/Colonel leading a wing of NPCs, restricted to Deneb only.

Ah, I made a few mistakes in my post. Edited: Replaced X-1 with IDF (Itani Defence Force) Valkyrie Vigilant. Added several ranks, including Admiral that allows simple control of Tridents through PM commands and rewards access of UC cells.

Ensign should be an earned rank. Civilians should start simply as a "Recruit" until they have at least some battle experience.

Alloh, read the post again. It said BP kills, though it could be combined with BS kills.

I think that advancing in the military should require you to be active in all fields (BP, BS). We could always make it specialized, with X amount of skirmishes OR X amount of kills.

Alloh, that was what I had in mind for a promotion mission. Perhaps dock in a capship escorting some official for high-ranking promotions.

I agree with wingmen.

Also, what about having a badge for each rank?

Note: Sorry for the random responses to various posts.

For military, the badge is the Rank Insignia.

For Ensign, since to join military you must already be a pilot, seems logical to me that you join with a junior officer grade. This is a cadet who completed flight school, but not yet proven in combat.

By the way, will VO military ranks approach those form Navy or Air Force? from which country? NATO ones?

And for senior officer, for now I would not make those ranks available. Reserve them for later use, when its possible to command more than one ship, as fleet commanders.

Ok, deleted Recruit rank. I agree with you.

I'd like to have the ranks from Ensign to Commander added soon, and leave the Captain and Admiral with their cappie and wingmen control for later, myself. Just something, at least. Am I correct in asuming the first four ranks would not be too difficult to add to the game, devs?

There are up to two tridents in larger battles, Alloh. Any ship could be included, though. I think we should start with just a couple small cappies to start, and see if PM commands work out.

I would imagine the Navy ranks, we are flying "ships" anyway. ; )

I agree with the rank system completely. As for the UC charge cells, this is a great idea, as long as we make the 40 mentor reward something really really big, since it is impossible to cheat now without paying devs a lot. It *is* possible to get to 40 without cheating (speaking of which, you should make mentor system better).

+1

to alloh my point is not to allow lower lis. levels to military people, it is to create a situation where one HAS to choose sides in order to get the benefit if national military equipment.... No matter how rich or experienced, a civilian will never be able to (legally) own a M109A6 Paladin (as a real world example). Right now, especially for UIT there is no incentive to choose one side over the other. The point of making a rank system is not to make these ships easier to get... far from it... its to make it impossible to fly a valk if you are a Serco. Impossible for you to fly a prom if your a smurf... its about making a UIT choose one or the other.

Otherwise "rank" and badges are absolutely useless here. No one is going to go do borked missions that dont pay well just for another badge.

"since it is impossible to cheat..."

Not even remotely true. However, the UC idea is good.

@Ender
As I said, military gear should be reserved for military personnel only. Since no one can be on both forces...

People have been asking for my intentions as far as rank structure, so I posted some design notes to a new thread. Note, these are old notes, and need updating, and I'm sure there are some design issues and gotchas and problems in there, so take it all with a grain of salt. Still, it is kind of my last "big overview" on this.

1) Respawn the lesser missions more frequently.
2) Make npc behaviour consistent when fighting pc. At present, npc's only attack one at a time. This continues when fighting a pc of the opposing side, which for me disrupts an enjoyable pvp experience. If a pc of the opposing side targets another and does damage, any npc attacking that player should lose interest.
3) Limited wingman type commands for all regardless of future rank in the form of a) Attack my target b) attack my attacker c) piss off.
4) Add port license reward for kills.
5) Score assists. Particularly for cap ship kills.
6) Score pk's towards the missions. Make them count as worth more than standard npc kills. 2-5 would be nice.
7) Maybe give the flares a bit of a buff. I find the general ineffectiveness of them to create the bad habit of not taking them seriously and if carried over into pvp is death.

On another note, the credit reward seems fair at this point. I'm finding that my wealth is growing reasonably well as opposed to my perpetual losses prior.

I'm all for anything that accomplishes this...

"make it impossible to fly a valk if you are a Serco. Impossible for you to fly a prom if your a smurf... its about making a UIT choose one or the other."

first of, bumping for epic, +1 to all.
Second, another command to fluffy's set: 4) intercept my target's attacker.

the X-1: how about make the test pilot mission only available upon sufficient military experience.

Finally: introduce something similar to the Goliath cannons on the Eo/denb WH and Serco's equivalent on their side of deneb. Not the current swarm of turrets, but a few of insta-hit cannons. Deneb has the entire might of Itani's/Serco's defense to stop a massive invasion, a lowly fighter should not be able to get through.

Instead of insta-hit, what about something that shoots a giant explosive that detonates on a timer, causing an explosion the size of a few biocom mines' radius, and astronomical damage to anything within a couple thousand meters? The charge itself should have a limited velocity to make it somewhat escapable, detectable. Insta-hit lazers would be too effective, killing people as they jump, like they do in training sectors.

Even better:
Goliath cannons are anti-capship weapons, not used against anything smaller than a trident. So, must be a very few, surrounded by smaller defense turrets, against fighters/bombers.

But they should be there. As big as possible, almost a small station. and ready to kill the future player-owned cappies!

Preferably, make is a dockable station, with special military logistics missions, and later, conquerable.