Updating SF Ranks

Personally, I think we should stick to Naval ranks.

Perhaps break the ranks up into Enlisted and officer.

Allow the player to earn Enlisted ranks through offline play (kind of, self training) and only allow them to progress up the Officer ranks through online game play.

Place them all on one scale.

When using a registered name... place the normal game limitations reguarding rank.
You can go online RIGHT AWAY and earn ranks, but you start on the Enlisted scale. While you're running up the enlisted scale, you can play offline as you see fit to earn some rank ups, but it caps it when you hit Lt. Once there, the only way for you to continue to earn points is to play online. This allows players the benifit of being able to self train themselves and their screen name and establish a little bit of a prepared character for true online play. This way, new users can get a little bit of a starter 'character' going, and veteran users who reset their names don't have to deal with the hassle of going in straight from scratch in a 'HOT' server.

The only remaining thing to ensure is that where the enlisted and officer ranks divide in terms of what you can get in leiu of equipment. We want players to get a LITTLE start up... not get half way up the unlocks before playing an online game.

For offline play only characters, don't bother with the rank system, let the player play as anything they want without restriction, it allows them to familiarize themselves with stuff and give them an idea of what they'll be getting at higher ranks.

I also want to kind of limit Electronic Arts Syndrome... ladderclimbing from HELL. Naturally, people want to be the BEST... but when you put too much emphasis on the ranks, people turn into Pointfarmers. A game of BF2142 on a pub-server will show you nicely how things work. People go do their own thing, earning the Rape Enemy Soda Machine with Knife badge or something equally lame. And when they're off doing that, they're not really out to play the game.