Military Rank System rework and Duty System idea



The MRS (Military Rank System) in this game is really disappointing since Elite is considered a space adventure, trading and combat simulation video game and from the simulator side the MRS is just poor. There are three ideologically different Major Factions with their own territory and military power. Other than these there is nothing that corroborate their simulation being. You can go up on the MRS by grinding the hell out of a Major aligned Minor faction's mission board then you can buy their military spacecraft and as soon as you got what you wanted you can leave them and forgot about the whole thing. Not to mention the nonsense that you can rank up every each of them, like they doesn't know each other. Meanwhile there are massive wars and conflicts between them politically and ideologically as well. I heard lot of camplaint about this in the past and we talked a lot about the MRS in my gaming community too. We came up a bunch of idea and now I try to bring them together. In before anything, I want to apologies for my bad english, I hope you'll be able to understand me.



The writing below contains my ideas along with my friends' from our gaming community.





The Idea:

Currently the state of the MRS is ridiculous. Its like you could be an Admiral in the Soviet Union and in Reagen's America at the same time. There are no actual benefits to be a soldier of your Major Faction. This and the grind-based "challange" needs to be changed if Frontier ever want to move forward with the Major Factions before they became meaningless. We don't know Frontier's plan on this, so we tried to approach it from the current state.





Step #1: Your Mission as a Double-Agent is Over



You log in to the game and suddenly a message arrives for you. If you click on the massage, a big window shows up with the title "Congratulations Commander! Your mission as a double-agent is over, the operation is succeeded, now you can finally come home." Under the title there are three option to choose: the Federation, the Empire and the Alliance. You click on your favorized superpower and you got a confirmation request: "Are you sure? If you choose this Major Faction you will lose your ranks from the opposite factions. In compensation you'll be able to choose a reward for your work as an undercover agent and for your gathered intelligence." These reward could be Credits/Reputation/Materials, and the values are based on your other reputation levels. This decision would be a mandatory for anyone who has ranks with more than one Major Faction. However you have a fourth choice. Instead of choose a side, you could use this to retire from the military and became fully independent. This means your ranks will be wiped and also you'll get a bunch of reward for your work, and if in the future you decide you want to join a Major Faction you can start it from scratch, like any independent pilot out there. This message would be unavoidable. Until you decide you would be in independent state plus locked away from any Major Faction (in the following I will call the MF) aligned mission. This first step meant to be the watershed for your future progress. You can make stronger your relationship with your favored superpower or you can leave them and walk away with a big reward.





Step #2: Advantages and Disadvantages, Duty System, Consequences



The first step does not make sense if there isn't a fair Advantages and Disadvantages system. Among them the most important is the advantage part. Currently the only advantage is the possibility to buy the MF's ships. Of course I could mention the permits but its too small to consider them as an advantage. In our idea the rewards should be constants. I think we should feel our commitment's affect on our gameplay and overall game experience. These features should be accesed based on your rank, so lets gather up these:



1. Advanced Military Navigation Acces: If you are in wing, you can use wing-beacon and nav-lock to jump on your wingmate's signal from a longer distance. Imagine, if you would able to do the same thing to any stations where your MF is in control.



2. Military Wardrobe: Its a very awaited think and we talked about this a lot of times. Frontier is making money from customization, and as long as they won't sell ships and modules for real money, I say its a good thing and we should appreciate this. But ingame earnable military clothes, batches, decals would be awesome. Many says this game has no endgame but I think they are wrong. In my opinion this game's endgame is your costumization possibilities and it should include military rank based items. Store still offers the bigger variation but you should have the alternative with it's lore-friendly restrictions. Also these rewards shouldn't be obtainable from store.



3. Cheaper modules and ships in you MF's space: Not too much, a 5% would perfectly do it, just to feel the care of your faction, to feel that you are more important here, than in any other space.



4. Lower rebuy cost on MF ships: Since you are in the military, the ship is not entirely your's. And since its not entirely yours, your MF would pay it's part from the rebuy. This should be true only for MF ships, but at any place you go.



5. Heavily icrease the friendly fire treshold on friendly MF aligned vessels based on your rank: You are respected, and more they respect, less they'll be mad at you for your mistakes. This would make High/Medium/Low RES more player-friendly in your MF's systems since you would not be abused if a suicidal authority runs in your fire.



6. Call to Arms: We saw NPCs in wing with you (training missions), we saw how "Call Ship" works in your SRV and we also saw the new ATR NPCs. If its possible to combine these three thing into one feature, then Frontier should do it. I'm not talking about hire some NPC to fight on your side (gameplay and balance issues), I'm talking about a button like in your SRV. You could activate that and then a Quick Reaction Force would jump in instantly to help you. Also it should be based on your rank and should have a heavy timer on it since it could be a decisive advantage in all situations. Of course we saw SRV system and MultiCrew in work, and still its a technicall issue that they can't combine that two thing into one (according to Frontier), so who knows what is possible and what isn't. Just an idea.





This second steps also contain disadvantages because its must to do to balance the whole system. I would start with the Duty System, that needs to be implemented for this reworked MRS:



1. Active Duty: You are in active duty, means you benefits from its advantages, can use military rank required ships and your life is much easier in their space. But what can you do to maintain, to evolve, to get ranks? Sign up for active duty! In this stance you are an active pilot of your MF, so they can count on you if the time comes. In game this means whether you go you considered a representative of your MF. Lets say you are Federal. In your ship's holoscreen (FUNCTIONS/FACTION) you can see your alignation to the Federal Minor faction. If there are more than one Federal Minor Faction in that system, you can chose which one you want to support. If there is no Federal Minor Faction in that system it remains None, as before. But while you are in Active Duty, you can't fight against your own MF. So since you are in active status, you must do your job. You will receive a call-in time to time from the Federation when they are in conflict in some of their nearby system. This means you have to go there and kill a fair number of 'enemy-of-the-federation' ships in the Conflict Zone then you can go on your way. If your are more like a logistic agent, you could choose to do some non-combat military action, for example provide necessary goods for the Federation during Backgroud Simulation's preparation phases (inside the mission system maybe). This should happen at every 40 PLAYED hour in the game and you should have 10 PLAYED hour to accomplish your duty, so it could not pass by while you are away from the game, then hit you like a bad surprise when you comes back. The Active Duty would be an ongoing status and you would be payed for your services with REPUTATION. You won't grind your way trough the rank system beacuse it will TIME BASED. Of course it should be very fair and not unreal at the same time but I think this is the ultimate solution for the whole navy system.





2. Reserve Duty: This should be the alternative of the Active Duty status, and should be switchable (with time lock). If you are a proud officer but you don't want to do the job, you can became reserve pilot and benefits everything (including commander suits, decals, discounts, etc.) except rank based ship/module (if this comes in the future) acces. In this stance you won't lose ranks and you don't need to answer the call-ins, but you also won't be able to fight against your MF's Minor Factions either in conflict zones.



3. Lose Acces: Its not realistic if you reach a rank and you don't do anything to maintain it. In real military you can't earn a rank then forgot about the duty without consequences. Don't misunderstand me, I don't want MRS to be like PowerPlay (if you become a deserter the whole gang will be after you), no. But also I would like to feel that I'm really part of my MF military and I have obligations. If you choose to sign up to be a militant in an MF, you must accept this. You also can be militant as independent but then you shouldn't have acces the goods of your Major Faction. In our idea you could lose your rank (I will explaint this below) and when you does you should loss your acces that you got from being in the MF's military.



4. These ships are belongs to the superpower, not to individuals: In current system if you are a Rear Admiral in the Federation, you can buy a Corvette and you'll be able to buy it forever. In our idea if you drops below Rear Admiral you should lose your acces to your MF ship requires a rank. In my idea it should be non-rebuyable when you lose the required rank. If you die in it, the Detention Facility will impound it and you could buy it back only if you reach that rank again. So if you abandon the Federation you won't be able to run up and down in a Corvette anymore like you can buy back if you blow up in. As soon as you reach your the required rank again you would be able to purchase it back from the MF's "pawnshop" (with all your fitted and engineered modules) and if you didn't lost it at all (for example, you just parked it somewhere) then you can use it again by right. In real world I can't be a tank-driver then leave in an M1 Abrams after decomissioning.



5. LOSE RANKS: It should work like a balance sheet. You start rank up your reputation in an opposite MF and you'll lose your originally favored MF's rank at an increased rate. This could prevent players to have rank in two faction at the same time but would let them to switch from a way to another if the player willing to. It should work like this: Lets say you are a Federal high-ranked officer with it's benefits but you want to turn cloak. You go to an Imperial system, to an Imperial controlled station. You land on and there you could choose to contact with an Imperial Recruitment Agent. Then there you could have the ability to pledge to them, which means your Federation Rank will be frozen. With this you lose everything you got from the Federation (commander suits, cloths, decals, ship acces, discount acces in fed systems, etc.). Thats not means you'll lose those ranks yet, its just frozen, which means it cannot be increased and you lost your acces to its features. This Imperial Recuirement Agent could recruit you and you can start to go up on the ladder. As you go up on the Imperial ladder so you lose your ranks in the Federation, but on an increased rate. For example if you become a Master in Empire, you'll lose your Admiral rank in the Federation, and so on. If you suddenly change your mind you can go to a Federal Recruitment Agent and do the same. As many times you do this the negative reputation rate will increase. So you'll still have the ability to choose but you'll suffer its consequences in a fair way.





This is it so far. Whats your thoughts?