Players should be able to attain rank within their respective military and achieve badges for participation in the Border Skirmishes.

Badges could be rewarded for:
* Casualties inflicted upon the enemey.
* Capital-ship kills/assists

Rank should be based on a score, which could be calculated based on casualties inflicted and enemy player kills (whilst both are in a Border Skirmish). PC kills should be weighted more heavily than NPC kills, but not so much that someone can't get the high(est) score. Further, ranks should be tiered just like existing militaries, with only one person able to hold the highest rank at a time.

These ranks should not be a for-life achievement but based on continued participation. Each week, a percentage of each player's score could be subtracted from the total. Ranks should also be dependent upon maintaining a certain score.

A perk of having a high rank could be that the player could dock with capital-ships and take over piloting these ships. There could also be other possible bonuses for holding a high military rank.

Ranks are a good idea to go along with the stats page

Ranks would be nice.

Yes, this. Do it.

Love it.

Ranks and badges sure, but dont make it give a game advantage over other players. That's lame in other games.

Well, I'm pretty sure Inc wants to do precisely that, arf. One of his older RFC type posts was going on about how as you rise through the ranks you'd be able to command larger squads of players/npcs, and eventually sort of transition from FPS in fighters to RTS commanding the fleets from capships. At least, I think that was an Inc post.

Personally I like the idea of high ranking military members being able to command capships within Deneb (so long as they self destruct or otherwise eject the player if he tries to leave the system). It gives PVPers a way to gain (limited) access to capships, instead of them being purely a hardcore trader thing.

With regards to being able to pilot capships, I think this should be limited to the sector the ship spawns in. No joyriding in military property. This would allow us to use broadside style attacks though, without Incarnate having to monkey with the AI.

I can see having the capability "unlock" above a certain rank without being a problem, but making it so the person with the highest rank on the team -always- gets that ability sucks. Other games I've played (Battlefield 2, NS, etc) that have things like this inevitably end up with some total jerk lording over the command position for hours and ruining it for the rest of the team. Its not fun in those games either.

Then you end up with half the team doing some sort of counter-productive things like blowing up your own capital ships just to de-throne the d-bag.

I don't advocate having a specific perk that only the highest rank can have, unless it's simply something like the anniversary vulture. Something as game-changing as being able to pilot military cap-ships should be available to something like the top 2 or 3 ranks, which could be available to at a minimum 2 or 3 players, and to as many as the devs would like to allow should they assume this style of ranking system.

I do, however, strongly advocate a scoring system for rank access that degrades over time. Otherwise you end up with everyone being a fleet admiral after a while.

The anniversary vulture is strictly cosmetic. It's stats are identical to the normal vulture.

Precisely my point.

Yaya. DO it :)