Heyya guys,
well, i played that game for so long and actually thought, that i knew everything in terms of promotions and the scoring system.
But well, a friend of mine is actually very confused about that.
He is playing through the FreeSpace 2 Main Campaign on Easy difficulty with 22.0.0. So the default difficulty that is set if you create a new profile.
He finished the second Act of this game. So he completed "A Flaming Sword". But however, he is still an Ensign. He never got any promotion regardless that he killed some capital ships, especially during the NTF incursion of Gamma Draconis.
So, we know that you get a lower score if you play on lower difficulties.
The Scaling Factors in terms of points are as follows:
1.00 is 100%, so the score that is used as a base in the tables and missions. These factors are specified in the source code of the game.
0.20 for very easy
0.40 for easy
0.70 for medium
1.00 for hard
1.25 for insane
So, in principle, the player should receive only 40% of the base points on Easy.
But well, here comes the part i also did not understand. My friend had much less points than this 40%.
He has 206 kills and 49 assists right now.
In the "Score by kills only" segment he also has 6209 points now. I personally never thought about it, because i am playing on Hard+ normally anyway. But i think the given 6209 points are actually the 1.00 value from which the 40% are calculated.
But 40% of that should be around 2684 (more exactly 2683,6) points, but he only got 2144 so far. So he is still missing over 500 points, which seems to be a lot.
I mean, 2684 are only the 40% of the kill score. But all the assists should gives him additional points, that are missing as well. Or were the Assist points only awarded in Multiplayer (they give 50% of kill points there iirc)?
Apart from that, it is interesting that 2144 is still only a little over the half that is required for the first promotion to Lieutenant Junior Grade (4000 points).
I did not remember the retail days very well, but are you not supposed to be promoted at least once during the main campaign even on Very Easy?
Have to admit that i can not even remember if i ever saw, that the Current Score is way lower than the "Score by kills only" value.
On the first thought, that did not make even sense to me, as i always thought, that the Current Score includes the Kills only score.
It started to make sense only after i realized that the "Score by kills only" is not influenced by the scaling factor.
Greetings,
Jenna
