Climbing up the Imperial navy ladder
15 Sep 2016Yondu 'Mary Poppins' Udonta
The way up the Imperial navy ladder can be very very long after the 2.1, if you stick to the old rules that you used for promotion.The mission stack is limited to 20 missions, it is nearly impossible (and useless) to stack Imperial navy missions. Back in the days a player that reached 100% of the rank could just stack Imp. Navy missions that gave him the rank just by fulfilling a few of them. Also the increase was in different levels, so by fulfilling a transport you would get +, for kill you would get +++. One could be King in a weekend of play. But since 2.1 everything seems to have medium impact, at least on the mission board.
Do not let yourself think that every mission is equal. Transport missions give you just a half or quarter of increase of what a courier job gives you. And every rank reached gives you smaller increases. So here is what to do now.
There are a few sectors that are called reputation boost sectors. Names are Quince, Cubeo, Tamar, HIP 31666, Shu Babassi and some minor others.
Your best bet are the last two ones. What you do is to go to Shu babassi - land on the station, or planetary outpost and stack courier missions for Empire affiliated nations. They all have one destination which is a planetary outpost on the neighbouring sector. That is your gold hit, stack up courier missions, if you ran out of them, just switch between open/solo play and stack more.
Then go to the destination and unload all.
If Shu babassi is empty or in lockdown, or the empire faction does not have enough control in the system go to HIP 31666 and stack courier missions for Ogonda. Same principles apply.
The thing is this way you go through ranks much quicker than befriending every faction of the empire. But be aware that higher ranks are more difficult to reach by stacking. E.g. 20 missions finished will give you increase 20 % on Baron, 12% on Viscount, 8% on Count. So be ready to give time to those last 2 ranks to Duke and your Cutter.