I think that we should have another tier of Combat Reputation.

One below Laughable: -150 to -200 Combat Rep: Destructible
One above Insane/Insanity: +500 to +600 Combat Rep: Destroyer

Seeing the same rep over and over again kind of gets boring imo, I think we need more Combat Reputation Tier(s) on this Game.
Names of the Reputations could use some work but I think it's good
Just an opinion of mine. What do you think?

What do I think? I think too many people are still preoccupied with a meaningless ratio. Combat Reputation means absolutely nothing. Every few weeks, someone says "new combat reps!" and every few weeks I gotta remind them it's meaningless. Personally, I would prefer the whole thing be removed from the game as it is in no way an indicator of how good a PvP player someone is.

Hate to disagree with ya Darth, but to me they are far from meaningless. Granted they are at arbitrary cutoff points, and can be obtained any number of ways, but at the end of the day it is a visual representation of exactly what it says. Their reputation. While it may not speak to their ability, it does give a very good indicator of your likelihood of being attacked back or not, as well as if the player regularly uses traps or not. The reputation on a ship is a good cursory indication of whether or not you want to hit that specific ship

In my experience (2 years in a few days), there is no difference in the rate of retaliation or trap-use between Insane, Balanced, or Laughable. The only thing "Insane" indicates on a vast majority of people is how well they farm the low ranks on the BT while they are offline.

I'm in no way discounting your experience, but I've been playing over 19 months myself and I can kill laughables all day with no retaliation, and rarely a trap, but if I do the same to insanes, someone will kill me back over night, and the majority keep traps up to protect their reputation. Reputation may be arbitrary but the psychological effect of it on the player is vastly different for a laughable who is likely a low rep because they don't care about pvp and a random disable vs someone who fought their way to insane and wants to keep it that way

As somewhat of a side note, but more on topic, I don't care one way or another about adding more reputations. The ones we have now serve their purpose but more would give me something to do since I'm a completionist anyway.

i like pitiful for -150
for +640 (following the pattern of increase on the plus side), i'd pick devastating or merciless.

wouldn't mind seeing a medal for racking up x # of merciless disables

as for Darth's comment about it meaningless - maybe at his level everyone is already insane, but in the mid-early game, the combat rep is *very* useful when pvp'ing.

and looking at f3ar3dlegend's topic, some folks see it as another goal to get a 'good' combat rep - to me, the more possible goals to fit a variety of playing styles, the better for the game.

I agree with Darth, Combat Rep means nothing.

Until recently I was "laughable" Because I didn't feel like hitting back, I concentated on Npcing and doing missions. Now I feel like playing around with bases, so I punch back and I'm back up to balenced by disabling every balenced and ABOVE ships that I find.

besides, Combat Rep means nothing because someone can easily hang round at low rank, disabling people left right and center, does that mean they are better than people who could blow their ship to pieces with just a balenced Rep?

just like in most games, Rep only matters to people who A. want to pvp all the time or B. Think it actually means something.

Big -1 from me.

+1

I think it would make the combat reps more meaningful if they were based on a k/d ratio as opposed to a k+/-d.
IMO a player with 1000 kills but 600 deaths is not really an insane combat rep
same as 600 kills and 1000 deaths is not really laughable

I must admit, I tend to avoid lower reps because they're usually hallyed, and I target insanes because they're usually glass cannons.

A K:D ratio based rep system would be better, 1:1 being normal, probably 5:1 being insane, and the rest filled in the middle. But still, they're meaningless. Arbitrary. Pointless.

Exactly why they mean something

spy probes are all the combat rep i need

You might run out... um, eventually. Like, if a mission came out and you used them all and didn't have any to perform any probing. THEN what?

You know what I don't see rep as a way to see how good a ship someone has or how brilliant they are at pvp, i see it as a way to see how much they like pvp, what's their game style type thing, and for that reason i would like to see more combat reps or the existing ones a LOT more spread out.

And why is that? to find the easier targets? if you really think combat rep means anything, go after those who have high combat rep aswell instead of 'bullying' the easier/less inclined to fight back.

I do go after all reps, I said so myself in my OP. And as to "why is that" you answered that yourself. You were laughable because you didn't feel like hitting back, and as soon as you decided to change that, your rep changed as well. As I said before, rep doesn't tell people how strong you are, but it does give an indicator of the likelihood you will retaliate.

Most of the time thats what I look at when im low on energy.. usually laughable people have poorly built (for PvP) ships. so ill hit them for sure when im JUST going for enough reds for a base lock or a raid.
But when I'm doing PvP because thats whats floating my boat for the time, I'll hit EVERYONE on my bt to gauge their strength, and once I hit someone I keep going until they go down.. only found a few good online fights that way.
as for whether or not I get hit back, I usually dont, which I think is weird. I've been disabled maybe 4 out of 7 days of the week, all whilst offline and by players of 100 or 200 + ranks above me... now why do you think those players were hitting me?? oh thats right, because its more energy efficient to hit someone smaller then yourself.

As far as online fights go, I wont enter into one unless we're at war, or I've got a lot of energy to burn.. the last one was a few hundred energy, about 8 nulls, and a few bombs thrown around for fun, and I could have used the energy more efficiently at doing just about anything else.. but like i also said above.. once i hit someone I keep going.

just went thru the previous forum threads back to august of last year (and Darth F was flogging his horse in every single one !). here are the two that stood out to me (i.e. didn't devolve into nahnahnahnah):

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=17645&hilit=combat+reputation

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=23499&hilit=combat+reputation&start=0

for those that are interested in more variety in the combat rep stat besides insane / laughable (we know Darth, you think it's useless - well i think rank is useless too, but people still focus on it), here's my suggestion:

the current setup for combat rep is (kills - deaths):

-50 or -more Laughable
-49 to -40 Feeble
-39 to -30 Weak
-29 to -20 Passive
-19 to 10 Balanced
11 to 20 Harmful
21 to 40 Dangerous
41 to 80 Deadly
81 to 160 Menacing
161 to 320 Savage
321 or more Insane

the fixed number ranges give very little wiggle room. going to a straight ratio of (kills / deaths) disadvantages higher-ranked players who weren't able to build up their pvp reps early. so here's my suggested model for a more varied array of combat rep:

sqrt (rank) * kills / deaths

0-1 Useless
1-2 Laughable
2-3 Feeble
3-5 Weak
5-8 Passive
8-12 Balanced
12-15 Harmful
15-20 Dangerous
20-40 Deadly
40-60 Menacing
60-80 Savage
80-100 Insane
100-150 Merciless
over 150 Destoyer

the ranges may need to be tweaked, but the formula change should be easy enough to code without completely disrupting the system.

Really? So you'd be happy to wait around until you drop down all the way into the new lowest one, and then fight your way back up to the new top one? Good luck with that.