[da1edwin]

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?

[Cobra]

In FS1 I made Commodore, but that was when I could hold my own on Insane.

The highest I've gotten in FS2 is Captain.

[da1edwin]

In FS1 I made Commodore, but that was when I could hold my own on Insane.

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?

[Cobra]

By being a real badass and playing on Hard.

(that and telling my wingmen to ignore most of the targets so I could get all the points. )

[Droid803]

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 .

[da1edwin]

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?)

[General Battuta]

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.

[Cobra]

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.

[NGTM-1R]

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.

[headdie]

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.

given the casualty rates in game probably the latter

[Androgeos Exeunt]

(that and telling my wingmen to ignore most of the targets so I could get all the points. )

That's a tip for you right there.

[terran_emperor]

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

[Cobra]

(that and telling my wingmen to ignore most of the targets so I could get all the points. )

That's a 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.

[xXGrifterXx]

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.

[Scotty]

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.

[Aardwolf]

I got Admiral.  

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

@Scotty: it tells you in the barracks.

[Scotty]

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.

[General Battuta]

Uh, select your pilot, look in the lower pane? Hit some arrows if it's not displayed there?

[Androgeos Exeunt]

On the Easy difficulty in FS1 I used to tell all my wingmen to jump out so I could do everything.

That's cool.