Thrag glanced over at her, then said, “Um, right, but that’s a story for another time. Talk to me later if you want to hear the grand and glorious tale of—” Another cough. “Um, never mind. Where was I? Right, while the fleet is rather small, with only a single capital ship, my baby, the Scarlet Rose, we are particularly looking for those who are able to distinguish themselves as exceptional, rank B or above fighter pilots and engineers skilled in ship repair, whatever rank. For those who wish to join the fleet as an Ensign, you will be required to undergo a series of additional assessments and rank highly in various other fields. Um, right, I’m done now.”

Next stepped up an odd-looking, squat man with a funny nose Alan couldn’t quite see, wearing what looked to be highly advanced Revenant armor. He intoned in an emotionless voice without inflection, “I am Enigma, quartermaster and lead research officer. You have already been informed if you may join our ranks, and will be receiving additional assessments as they are deemed necessary.”

A number of other guild officers slowly made their way up, introducing themselves, outlining what they were looking for, but Alan slowly began to lose focus. All this organization stuff was rather boring, and if he understood correctly it looked like he’d either end up under Phantom, who was under Enigma, or with the general armed forces. The healers/medics, the psionic corps, the robotic specialists and researchers, none of those really mattered to him, at least not for now. Eve would record it all and give him any important information he missed anyways. Still, he had a few questions for Eve regarding what he heard.

What is it with all these rankings? Like I know some abilities have various rankings, but can overall combat ability or piloting skill be ranked like that?

With the proper tools, certainly. We shall see how it’s done tomorrow. Similar to how other systems categorize things in term of rare to legendary or normal to godlike, the Game simply assigns a rank and associated number. Overall abilities and creatures are similarly ranked, as well as things like ships and even guilds. As you have surely noticed, various enemies with the same levels have far different capabilities. A general rule of thumb used is it takes 100 players of the same rank to take on someone with one higher rank. Thus, 300 rank C soldiers might take on 3 rank B soldiers. This is a generalization of course, as ranks are further assigned numbers in the range of 1 to a bit over two billion (2^31 – 1, to be precise), the lower the number the better. Predecessors and major bosses like space dragons are generally assigned a rank of S, humans a rank from F to A, depending on equipment and ability, and Haxlards a rank of D to S, for example. Once I possess more information, I will be able to also display enemy's ranks in addition to level.