Empire/Imperial Navy Rank Grind
Author: CMDR Laviic
Summary
What: Quickly gain reputation and promotion missions for the Imperial Navy
Why: Unlock access to Empire ships (Imperial Courier, Imperial Clipper, Imperial Cutter) and Unlock system permits (Achenar, Summerland, Facece)
Where: Hickam Survey in the Ngalinn system
How: Courier missions to Mainani and back
Requirements: Any small or medium ship. No cargo space and no special equipment required.
Note: The locations for these courier missions are outpost-type stations and only have small and medium landing pads available. Therefore, this method can not be done with large ships!
Empire Rank Benefits
| Empire Rank Benefits | |
|---|---|
| None | |
| Outsider | |
| Serf | |
| Master | Imperial Courier |
| Squire | Achenar Permit |
| Knight | |
| Lord | |
| Baron | Imperial Clipper Summerland Permit |
| Viscount | |
| Count | |
| Earl | Facece Permit |
| Marquis | |
| Duke | Imperial Cutter |
| Prince | |
| King | |
Full Guide
The Empire of Achenor is one of the three galactic Super Powers in Elite Dangerous, together with the Alliance and the Federation. As such, there exist a number of flyable ships in the game that are specific to the Empire and can only be bought and used after reaching a certain level of reputation with the Empire and getting promoted to certain ranks within its Imperial Navy. Climbing up the ranks of the Imperial Navy will also unlock system permits for some of the Empire-controlled systems within the Bubble.
The ships locked behind Imperial Navy Rank-Requirements are:
Imperial Courier, unlocked at Imperial Navy Rank 3 (Master)
Imperial Clipper, unlocked at Imperial Navy Rank 7 (Baron)
Imperial Cutter, unlocked at Imperial Navy Rank 12 (Duke)
However, for most players, the Imperial Cutter is the main reason for wanting to climb up through the Imperial Navy’s ranks.
The Imperial Cutter is one of the “Big Three” ships in the game, alongside the Anaconda and the Federal Corvette, and as such is arguably one of the best endgame ships available to players (as of version 3.5 of the game). While being the most expensive ship in the game and also being the least manoeuvrable of the Big Three, its solid offensive and defensive capabilities paired with the largest potential cargo space of all ships in the game at 794 tons, make it well worth the time to unlock the rank of Duke in the Imperial Navy to gain access to the Cutter.
How does increasing your rank for the Imperial Navy work?
You gain ranks for the Imperial Navy by completing special promotion missions that are randomly offered to you on the mission board by any faction that is aligned with the Empire, after you have reached a certain level of reputation with the Empire. You can see the progress towards gaining access to your next promotion opportunity by looking into your ship’s information panel to the right of your cockpit.
Once this meter reaches 100%, you will have the chance to be offered a special promotion mission. You can identify those missions by the “… for Imperial Navy …” (or something similar) in the name of the mission.
Note that these missions are handed out at random, once you’ve met the requirement for it. So if you don’t accept the mission right away, there is a chance it will have disappeared when you open the mission board at a later point. Don’t worry! Just keep on playing. It will re-appear eventually. After you have accepted and successfully completed the mission, you will be promoted to the next higher rank in the Imperial Navy and you will have to fill your meter to 100% again before you’re offered the next promotion opportunity. There are a total of 15 available ranks, from 0 (None) to 14 (King). The Imperial Cutter unlocks at rank 12 (Duke). A player does not have to decide between Empire and Federation, and can earn ranks and reputation for any one of the two without repercussions or being locked out by the other.
What’s the best way to quickly climb the ranks of the Imperial Navy?
Many players agree, that one of the best ways to quickly gain ranks in the Imperial Navy is to run Courier Missions at Hickam Survey in the Ngalinn system, since they only require you to dock at the target location to complete them, require no cargo space in your ship, no special equipment and there are plenty of them available. All you have to do is accept the missions, make the very small 3.82 LY jump into the Mainani system and dock at “Mies van der Rohe’s Claim” to collect your rewards. That’s it. And once you’re at Mies van der Rohe’s Claim, accept any Courier mission back to Ngalinn that you can find, jump back to Ngalinn, dock at Hickam Survey again and collect your rewards. Rinse and repeat, until you get access to the promotion missions for the Imperial Navy.
Note that courier missions sometimes have a chance to send hostile ships after you while you’re on your way to complete your missions, with a message sent to you that asks you to eliminate those hostile ships. Simply ignore these messages and carry on to your destination.
Detailed explanation
Once you’ve reached Hickam Survey, you will find a large number of minor factions that are aligned with the Empire. Doing missions for those minor factions will therefore increase your standing with the Empire and eventually give you promotions for the Imperial Navy. You can see if a faction is aligned with the Empire by the symbol to the right of the faction’s entry in the mission board list.
From the mission board, you are specifically looking for Courier missions with destination Mainani, as those are among the easiest and quickest missions to do, and can be done with virtually any ship in the game in just one single jump. No cargo space and no special equipment required.
Note that when you first arrive at Hickam Survey, a lot of the missions will be locked behind a reputation requirement. But since the aim of doing these missions is to gain reputation as quickly as possible, you should gain Allied-status with the factions in Ngalinn and Mainani very quickly.
As a general tip: You can set the mission type filter in the mission board to “Transport”, so it becomes easier to find the courier missions.
It should be relatively easy to reach your active mission limit (20) with the missions offered at Hickam Survey. That’s why you should prioritize courier missions that have reputation as one of the rewards to chose from, since you will always want to choose the reputation when collecting your reward to gain ranks as quickly as possible. You can recognize those missions by the “REP++” statement under the missions description. The more +-es, the better!
Only after you have accepted as many missions with reputation rewards as you can, should you start filling up with courier missions that don’t have reputation as a reward option. After you’ve accepted as many of those missions as you can, undock and make the jump over to Mainani. Once there, dock at Mies van der Rohe’s Claim and collect your rewards. Don’t forget: You always want to choose reputation as the reward! Even if your progress to the next Imperial Navy rank has already reached 100%, any reputation you gain for the Empire will still keep on counting in the background and carry over to the next rank, even if you haven’t completed your promotion mission yet.
To make life easier for yourself, once you’re ready to receive your next promotion opportunity, wait until you’re randomly offered a promotion mission that also happens to be a courier mission to Mainani (Or from Mainani back to Ngalinn). But of course you can accept any promotion mission offered to you, if you’re eager to and feeling confident that you can complete it.
Keep on doing this Ngalinn → Mainani → Back to Ngalinn loop for as long as necessary, until you have gained and completed enough Imperial Navy promotion missions to reach rank 12 (Duke) and you will have gained access to the Imperial Cutter!
Optimizations for more experienced CMDR’s with bigger budget
If you happen to have millions of credits lying around that you are willing to invest to speed up your grind, you can also consider doing all of the donation missions that pop up in Ngalinn and Mainani, since those missions give a lot of reputation and require literally no effort at all to complete.
In addition to this, you can also accept the courier missions in Mainani that have the Aitvas system as destination. However, it’s recommended you should use a ship that has at least 20.2 LY of jump range, to make the jump from Mainani to Aitvas and back to Ngalinn in one single jump each.
The benefit of this is that you can almost double the amount of courier missions you can do on your way back to Ngalinn by taking this quick detour to Aitvas, since there’s normally only a handful of missions back to Ngalinn available in Mainani. Furthermore, Aitvas also has many of the same Empire-aligned minor factions that are present in Ngalinn and Mainani available, and offers a large list of donation missions, which can boost your reputation gain significantly if you have the credits to spare. Sadly, there are no courier missions available at Aitvas, but the large amount of donation missions available in Aitvas, together with the courier missions from Mainani that you can bring with you, more than make up for the detour.
Closing thoughts
The courier missions from Ngalinn to Mainani are an incredibly fast way to grind Imperial Navy ranks at virtually no requirements for ship or equipment. I was personally able to reach rank 12 (Duke) within roughly 90 minutes of playtime, which almost feels like an exploit, considering how valuable access to the Imperial Cutter is. I used my trusty Diamondback Explorer for the loops which happened to have a Frame-Shift Wake scanner attached. And within the 1 or 2 minutes it took me to pick my next missions and undocking, more often than not I had around 2 or 3 wakes to scan from the NPCs that frequent the stations, which was a welcome addition to my rank-grind. Also, even though it is frowned upon by some hardcore players, I highly recommend installing a Docking Computer, since you will dock and undock a lot during this grind! Just give in to the lazy lifestyle and make this grind even easier for yourself :)