TIRO - Icybluenose's Ranking Guide

For those that are new players, I welcome you to TIRO and to Pardus and wish you every success.

What is this guide about? This does exactly what it says on the tin. In plain English or as close as I can get to it. It is a guide and will not be of any use at all, if you only choose the bits out of it that you like to do and leave the bits that you don.t. It is designed to get you to the next rank/ship in the least amount of time and by being as efficient as possible with your Action Points (AP)

It also supplements guides already issued by other TIRO members, so please refer to all of them before you start serious ranking missions. Link for the other extremely useful TIRO ranking guide Is Here

Rule 1 Focus

Ranking is something you need to focus on at all times in order to get to the next rung of the ladder quickly.

Do NOT mix ranking with trading activity unless it is clearly to the same destination as the mission(s) you are attempting.
The biggest cause of mission failure is lack of action points. If you start hop scotching around the systems like a ping pong ball you will make money!!! and fail missions.
Keep it simple!!!
Today I am going to rank or trade never both.

Rule 2 Plan

The guide's states, you should always try to start with 4500ap or more. Now that's fine, but the more AP you have, the less focused you become, as you stop looking at the AP counter and start to stack maybe too many missions. You then realise that you have bitten off more than you can chew and fail some of them. Every mission you fail you have to do another 3 just to stand still.

Stop and think for a minute!!! Can I get all of this done with the AP I have left?? Don't guess; use one of the many maps available including our own registered Automapper. Calculate the AP cost of movement before you start working out how to kill what is at the end of your journey.

Rule 3 Choose carefully

It maybe great fun blasting away at monsters all day long and nothing gives you more satisfaction than cleaning the remains of your 10th young space dragon off your windscreen.

However guess what!! Killing things costs AP and therefore if you can deliver stuff, it has to be your 1st option. Rank is gained by mission numbers not on their satisfaction to the player. Gain combat skills by all means but if quick ranking is what you want then don.t combine to two.

Let me explain further. It may take you anything from 60-100Ap per YSD kill (more if you are a completely new player. 3YSD kills could be 550+ AP How far can you travel on those AP?? On average across 4 maybe 5 sectors. You may not get the satisfaction but the rank will come quicker if you deliver 1st and kill 2nd.

Rule 4 Pick your moments and opportunities

Its easy to rank on 5000 AP, even my young daughters could do it. What about if you are down to 500AP?? Most would give up until the following day. You can squeeze missions out of 200 AP, if you plan and look at the bulletin boards carefully. EG Today I sat on a PSB with 380 AP. I saw 3 missions all faction all to adjacent sectors, all delivery missions. I mapped them working out how much AP it would take me, how much fuel I would need (it costs 15 AP to collect remember) and the cost to take the mission on (10 AP per mission. I also looked at the time allowed to complete these missions the 25 minute one would give me another 96AP to complete so I did the 15 minute one 1st. Most would have stopped, but I achieved another 3 missions on 380AP plus the time and extra AP gained by planning 1st. Every mission counts if you want that next rank quickly.

Rule 5 Learn from your mistakes

We all do what I have mentioned above, however the secret is to learn from the error and don't do it again. What is the point of trying to rank if you keep on:

Taking on too much.
Running out of fuel on an energy tile and using an extra 200 AP to move.
Running into a pirate you didn't see.
Running out of AP.
Running out of time.

The list is endless of things you can get wrong, so rather than take 5 steps forward to take 3 back if you Cock it up once DON.T do it again(and tell your alliance mates so they can learn too).

Rule 6 Location, location, location

AP is king, so the less moving you do to find the missions; the more you have to complete them. There is a mission run listed in the other TIRO guide and I have used it. However thinking carefully will get you more missions completed.

Let me explain. During any given day there will be about 400 players on line. About 40% of these players are experienced and will be going about their normal business of killing things, skilling and trading.

However that leaves about 60% who are probably ranking. How do I know this? Look at the stats screen. It details what players hold what rank for each faction. The empire has 56% of its players under the rank or Lord. So you have competition for your mission AP. Good missions go quickly and they only get recharged every 12 hours or so. If you can limit the traffic that gets into an area, you monopolise the missions, as there are less players after them.

We currently have a hard won arrangement with the Ruby Legion who hold a number of sectors which are closed to normal traffic. Start there and you will almost guarantee yourself the pick of the missions regardless of how many players are on line.

So that's the 1st draft and I will edit and amend over the course of time and experience.

Safe flying and good ranking.

Addendum by Varamin: Rank in a faction or competency (the things that you raise by doing missions) and XP are very different things. In the beginning, you shouldn't be worrying too much about XP. It will come on its own. Doing missions does bring some XP (every completed mission gives something like 10-30 XP, and if you do monster-killing missions you get XP for them), but in general, the best way to get XP is to kill lots of monsters.