Empire Grind - Tips wanted

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Empire Grind - Tips wanted

Postby DruiD » Sun Apr 10, 2016 11:47 pm

Hi all,
So the two most talked about \ claimed effective Empire grind options via ground assaults are HIP 10716 and Cubeo
This thread is referring to those methods, rather than bounties, smuggling, space combat methods etc. Happy to take private messages about other recommendations, but prefer to keep this thread on-point about these planetary assault methods.

Combat rank - Competent
Explorer - Trailblazer
Trade - Entrepreneur

My Priorities in Grinding rep - Rep % vs Time required, with credits earn't (or spent\lost) being secondary.

1. HIP 10716 - Where I started, grinding to Baron. Took some time but felt it was reasonable, but missions did seem to take a long time to respawn in the BB, including rotating, logging off, logging off to desktop and cycling each and every mode including 5 different private groups.
2. Cubeo - More "fun" but not sure if the additional time flying around and longer base assault = more rep/power. Went here after Baron as HIP 10716 seemed to be getting a little slow and lots of people talking about Cubeo.

REP Time (Baron onwards)
As mentioned, already at Baron .. so lets start there as we all know missions are worth less and less as you rank up.

Cubeo
Baron (5%) to Count 20% took 24hrs of play time all at Cubeo, spread across 3 days real world, 3 x 8hr stints.
So Nearly 215% full levels plus 15% + margin of difficulty increase for Viscount and Count but lets work on 215%.
- 215% / 24hrs = 8.95% per hour of play.
- occasional charity missions, maybe 10 at most in the whole 24hr period.

HIP 10716
Starting at Count 20% - returned to HIP to test REP returns over time
3 hrs of play - (2 X 1hr 20mins stacking and 10 mins for mission completion and return\handing approx) - 11% increase
- 11% / 3hrs = 3.68% per hour
- no charity missions (ever) for me at HIP 10716

Seems pretty clear that at least in my case, with my RNG odds - the mission spawns and time taken - Cubeo is better place to be currently.

Note:- we are excluding the rep cost increase from baron to Viscount then Count in my testing at HIP, but again - per hour, this simply means Cubeo is more effective. I plan on going back to Cubeo today and do another 3hr of testing.

So .. Question time... I know its a grind, I plenty use to that after playing WOW for 10 years, but

In terms of time taken so far to grind me rep - does this seem average, very slow, or good ?
- I have heard of people going to King in under 2 weeks, 3-4hrs per night?
- Its taken me weeks of 3-4 hrs per night to get Baron, and a solid 24hrs just to get to Count....
- How are others tracking? Does my time stats seem good or bad? Any way to improve things?

Thoughts?
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Re: Empire Grind - Tips wanted

Postby Cometborne » Mon Apr 11, 2016 6:46 am

I did the grind from Outsider all the way to King recently. Started out with doing random missions, then looked for charity missions at Tamar and Cubeo. When I found none, I tried the groud assault in Cubeo and got my behind handed to me on a silver platter. After that, I settled down at HIP 10716 and did ground assaults ("Cut the Power" and "Performance Review") and escape pod farming. Since the log-in/log-out dance got really boring really quick, I started listening to old Lave Radio episodes, starting at episode 1 and working my way forward until I reached King. This was somewhere around episode 55 or so, which means about 120-130 hours of playing time.

I did not do any extensive tracking except making tick marks on a piece of paper to count how many missions I had in my current stack, and took off when I had about 40 or so. After each base assault and when the missions dried up, I did a round of escape pod farming to relieve the boredom and to give the BB time to cool down. I never quit to desktop, only "save and exit to main menu".

I only saw a few charity missions at HIP 10716, and those were for the faction that was not aligned to the Empire. I did those anyway to improve my standing with them after I had to land while under missile fire from a Goliath guarding the starport. Which reminds me that I need to fly back to HIP 10716 one of these days and pay off my 260 kCr legacy fine.

Some things that I did notice:
a) Going open->mobius->solo->open seemed to work better to shake loose missions than solo->mobius->open->solo.
b) The rank gain for "Surface SAR"/"One of our pilots is missing" missions initially seemed independent of the money reward, but by the time I reached Duke and Prince, the low-paying missions looked to give less rank gain than the high-paying ones (>200 kCr).
c) There seems to be a bug with the rank reward for escape pods, I eventually settled on a "accept one mission, change instance, fulfill mission, change instance, accept next mission" cycle.
d) Doing planetary salvage missions (i.e. pick up cargo pods) is not effective for rank or credits. The escape pods do count towards your trade rank.
e) At promotion time, only do Naval Ascension missions that require a flight to the outpost above the planet, and do the instance grind to stack about a dozen of them. After arriving at the ouput, continue adding Naval Ascension missions (this time back down to the planet) until they dry up. Only complete the missions you picked up on the surface AFTER the Naval Ascension missions on the outpost dried up. Before you fly down, check for additional mission to the surface port for Empire-aligned factions.
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Re: Empire Grind - Tips wanted

Postby DruiD » Mon Apr 11, 2016 10:39 am

Cometborne wrote:c) There seems to be a bug with the rank reward for escape pods, I eventually settled on a "accept one mission, change instance, fulfill mission, change instance, accept next mission" cycle.
....
e) At promotion time, only do Naval Ascension missions that require a flight to the outpost above the planet, and do the instance grind to stack about a dozen of them. After arriving at the ouput, continue adding Naval Ascension missions (this time back down to the planet) until they dry up. Only complete the missions you picked up on the surface AFTER the Naval Ascension missions on the outpost dried up. Before you fly down, check for additional mission to the surface port for Empire-aligned factions.


Hi - thanks for the info and in particular these 2 tips.
c) To be clear - When you say change instance? You simply mean the same game mode cycle - stacking technique?
- e.g. Not kike when when in a wing you fly into super-cruise etc to ''re-instance' etc

e) So your stacking Ascension in the same game mode stacking manner? Cycling between Solo, Open etc. This never really seemed to work for me, normally wait 30-40 minutes, only seem to get 1-3 ascension missions and normally 3 different types- rarely the data or goods transport to the 'vision' outpost above the planet. will keep trying again thou.. Yes, aware that if I turn in any surface ascension missions the outpost ones will prematurely dry up.
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Re: Empire Grind - Tips wanted

Postby Cometborne » Mon Apr 11, 2016 11:50 am

You guessed correctly.

When I wrote "change instance", I meant saving and exiting to main menu, and then starting in another mode (open/group/solo).

And yes, I did stack the Ascension missions in the same way, but I was able to collect about a dozen of them before things dried up on the surface of HIP 10716 or on the outpost. However, I only got this idea when the promotion to Duke came around, so the earlier promotions were with one mission only.

The rank should not make a difference because you can accept multiple promotion missions in the Federal Navy for the same effect, and I am only at Post Commander there (and doing it without mode switching, which is slower, but much less boring).
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Re: Empire Grind - Tips wanted

Postby Cometborne » Thu May 05, 2016 2:58 pm

Anybody thinking about doing his/her empire grind should start RIGHT NOW, as FD is throwing a major spanner into the works for the HIP 10716 ground assaults in 2.1:

"Reduce mission limit to 20"

Ouch.
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Re: Empire Grind - Tips wanted

Postby DruiD » Sat May 07, 2016 4:20 am

YUP - finished mine to both Empire - King and Federation Admiral (thank gawd).
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Re: Empire Grind - Tips wanted

Postby thebs » Wed Jul 27, 2016 11:29 pm

Cometborne wrote:Anybody thinking about doing his/her empire grind should start RIGHT NOW, as FD is throwing a major spanner into the works for the HIP 10716 ground assaults in 2.1:
"Reduce mission limit to 20"
Ouch.

I guess I'm not following. I'm only Chief Petty Officer in the Federation, and only just made my 1st rank in Empire (halfway to second). They are going to limit the number of missions overall? Again, not understanding here.
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Re: Empire Grind - Tips wanted

Postby KLED » Thu Jul 28, 2016 4:38 am

It's already happened. You used to be able to have 100 missions active at once, now you can only accept 20.
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