Ratings

For information about module ratings, see Outfitting.

For information about merit points, see Merits.

Ratings is a way for Powers to rank pilots who have pledged their allegiance to them.

There are 5 ratings. Rating 1 being the Rating when you pledge allegiance to a Power. You have to unlock the next few Ratings through supporting your Power, or undermining a different Power. This also varies per Power, based on its Ethos.

By participating in Preparation, Expansion, and Control efforts of your Power, you gain merits. Merits are needed to unlock Ratings. They get progressively harder to obtain, with the final rating requiring 10,000 merits. Merits are also carried over from prior weeks at only a fraction of their worth, rewarding active participation, and preventing pilots from obtaining the last Rating and then no longer bothering with Powerplay. With each Rating, you will get a weekly salary, and a specific bonus. The salaries and necessary merits to unlock a Rating are the same for each Power.

Ratings are not automatically updated upon having the required merits. Your rating will increase upon the Powerplay weekly cycle, which happens on Thursday morning at 7am GMT.

Each Rating also allows for a higher power commodity allocation per 30 minutes. This is needed for the Preparation attempts of all Powers. You can accelerate commodity allocation by paying 100,000 credits per stacks of 10 power commodity.

With a Rating also comes the right to nominate certain systems for preparation attempts. With this, you get influence in where your Power will try to expand.

Rating benefits

Rating	Unlocked at	Salary/week	Allocation / 30 mins
1	0 merits	1000 credits	10 tons
2	100 merits	50,000 credits	15 tons
3	750 merits	500k credits	20 tons
4	1500 merits	5 million credits	25 tons
5	10,000 merits	50 million credits	50 tons

Each Power also has power-specific bonuses at Ratings 2, 3, and 5. This ranges from influence bonus, to a bounty payout increase, to resource price bonuses. Rating 1 and 4 hold no additional bonuses apart from the above-mentioned salaries, commodity allocation, and nominations. Rating 3 will always offer a power-specific module, which can only be bought after 4 weeks aligned with that power.

Defecting

It is possible to defect to another power. By doing so, you will retain a large portion of your merits, meaning that your rating will likely stay the same, or at worst, will be decreased by 1 level. However, by defecting you will anger your power, who will then try to hunt you down.

The strength of the hunters they send are likely based on your rating upon defection, and are not to be underestimated.^{[citation needed]}

Alternatively, if you would like to start from scratch, you can just leave a Power. By doing so you can not join an other Power for a set period of time, and you will lose all merits. In turn, you will not have to defect, and you will not be hunted down for leaving a Power.