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General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: da1edwin on July 30, 2009, 09:58:13 pm

Title: Highest rank attainable?
Post by: da1edwin on July 30, 2009, 09:58:13 pm
I'm curious - what's the highest rank anyone's been able to get, starting from a fresh pilot and going once through the main Freespace 2 campaign, and how? Ranks.tbl makes pretty clear that the admiral ranks are impossible without user-created missions or FRED/TBL abuse, but I've only ever gotten to Lieutenant in a runthrough, playing on Medium, and I wanted to know what better players than me could do. Difficulty matters in scoring, right? Has anyone beaten the campaign on Insane?
Title: Re: Highest rank attainable?
Post by: Cobra on July 30, 2009, 10:15:52 pm
In FS1 I made Commodore, but that was when I could hold my own on Insane. :D

The highest I've gotten in FS2 is Captain.
Title: Re: Highest rank attainable?
Post by: da1edwin on July 30, 2009, 10:25:55 pm
In FS1 I made Commodore, but that was when I could hold my own on Insane. :D

The highest I've gotten in FS2 is Captain.

FS2 Captain is 150,000 points, right? How on earth do you get that many in one playthrough of the retail campaign?
Title: Re: Highest rank attainable?
Post by: Cobra on July 30, 2009, 10:26:23 pm
By being a real badass and playing on Hard. :P

(that and telling my wingmen to ignore most of the targets so I could get all the points. :nervous: )
Title: Re: Highest rank attainable?
Post by: Droid803 on July 30, 2009, 10:30:25 pm
Well, there are some ship kills in there worth (a lot) more points than they really should, such as the SC Thanatos, thrown in as well, I would guess :P.
Title: Re: Highest rank attainable?
Post by: da1edwin on July 30, 2009, 10:43:10 pm
Yeah, I figured out the Sathanas-killing trick awhile back, and I think that helped get me to Lieutenant. My other question was, what's the exact difference between difficulty settings? (What makes one difficulty setting harder than the one below it? Do settings below Insane make the AI underutilize ships' capabilities? Or do high difficulty settings actually give multipliers for the enemy?)
Title: Re: Highest rank attainable?
Post by: General Battuta on July 30, 2009, 11:14:56 pm
I've played the campaign a few times on Insane and it strongly improves the game.

Insane is basically 'realistic mode'. The player loses his magical damage buffer (on medium you take about 50% of damage), the limits on the number of turrets, enemies, and missiles that can target the player are removed, and wingman/enemy fire rates and maneuver rates are brought up to something close to human.

Medium is the default difficulty but it's pretty absurdly weighed in favor of the player, which leads to a lot of the 'lol capships suck' or 'lol ai sucks' comments.
Title: Re: Highest rank attainable?
Post by: Cobra on July 30, 2009, 11:21:18 pm

Insane is basically 'realistic mode'. The player loses his magical damage buffer (on medium you take about 50% of damage), the limits on the number of turrets, enemies, and missiles that can target the player are removed, and wingman/enemy fire rates and maneuver rates are brought up to something close to human.

Yeah, only the problem is is that every damn fighter in the mission decides that I've got 'meal ticket' written all over my Perseus whenever I play on Insane.
Title: Re: Highest rank attainable?
Post by: NGTM-1R on July 30, 2009, 11:43:24 pm
From a story standpoint, you shouldn't really be able to make more than Commander in a single playthrough of FS2. That would fit with your squadron command towards the end. A Captain would have been promoted off the Aquitaine or replaced the ship's aerospace group commander. :P
Title: Re: Highest rank attainable?
Post by: headdie on July 31, 2009, 02:50:20 am
From a story standpoint, you shouldn't really be able to make more than Commander in a single playthrough of FS2. That would fit with your squadron command towards the end. A Captain would have been promoted off the Aquitaine or replaced the ship's aerospace group commander. :P

given the casualty rates in game probably the latter
Title: Re: Highest rank attainable?
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on July 31, 2009, 07:57:11 am
(that and telling my wingmen to ignore most of the targets so I could get all the points. :nervous: )

That's a :v: tip for you right there. ;)
Title: Re: Highest rank attainable?
Post by: terran_emperor on July 31, 2009, 11:01:30 am
Highest rank i've made is Commodore...Though i did one make Admiral playing Independance Warriors...Lol you get told to go read a book
Title: Re: Highest rank attainable?
Post by: Cobra on July 31, 2009, 09:04:23 pm
(that and telling my wingmen to ignore most of the targets so I could get all the points. :nervous: )

That's a :v: tip for you right there. ;)

On the Easy difficulty in FS1 I used to tell all my wingmen to jump out so I could do everything. :D
Title: Re: Highest rank attainable?
Post by: xXGrifterXx on July 31, 2009, 09:13:02 pm
I was playing Destiny of Peace, never finished the campaign BTW, but my score went from 150,000 to 400,000, so unless it's some fluke that might be a good campaign to rank up.
Title: Re: Highest rank attainable?
Post by: Scotty on August 01, 2009, 03:32:28 pm
How do you check your score like that?

Also:  I made Lieutenant J.G. playing on easy on the mission you destroy the Sathanas in.  I made Lieutenant S.G. by torpedoing the Ravana on my second playthrough, so I was pretty close at the end of the game.
Title: Re: Highest rank attainable?
Post by: Aardwolf on August 01, 2009, 03:52:33 pm
I got Admiral.   :nervous:

I had just discovered the Debug Console and the rank command it provides...

@Scotty: it tells you in the barracks.
Title: Re: Highest rank attainable?
Post by: Scotty on August 02, 2009, 01:24:51 am
Really?  I could never find it.

Where is it in the barracks?  I just looked around and couldn't find it anywhere.

Keep in mind that I'm talking retail here.
Title: Re: Highest rank attainable?
Post by: General Battuta on August 02, 2009, 01:28:51 am
Uh, select your pilot, look in the lower pane? Hit some arrows if it's not displayed there?
Title: Re: Highest rank attainable?
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on August 02, 2009, 07:00:49 am
On the Easy difficulty in FS1 I used to tell all my wingmen to jump out so I could do everything. :D

That's cool. :):yes: