View source for Talk:Combat/@comment-37.187.104.40-20180227023123/@comment-29997479-20180227024303

Those numbers are based on my own data collected during my path from Deadly to Elite. You can see the exact ships I killed if you access the spreadsheet from Reference 3 in the reference list. (I collected data over a continues span of 10%, and then multiplied by 10, which should yield enough data for a fairly accurate result). The data in that sheet is completely accurate for the period I recorded, and no ships were missed.

The "Average" number is actually the very number of ships it took me to reach Elite from Deadly. Since these numbers are only documented by a single CMDR, there are of course possible with variations here, especially in the types of ships you encounter.

Also note that if you have a NPC fighter pilot on board, you actually earn less experience even if they are not actively flying. Those numbers in the spreadsheet are collected without a pilot on board, but I noticed my rate of advancement dropped significantly when I had my pilot on board.

Note that since you mention bounties and bounty amounts, note that these doesn't have anything at all to do with ranking up, only the combat rank of your killed ships count, whether or not they have a bounty on them is irrelevant.