HOW RANKS WORK IN RPCS
Written for anyone who wants to know where rank comes from, what it is
worth, and who decides. It applies to every group on the sim in exactly the same way.RANK IS NOT SELF-ASSIGNED
No player can set their own rank. Nothing in the meter, the HUD or any
menu will do it. Rank lives on the server, in the sim database, and the only way it changes is through the faction terminal, operated by an administrator of that group. This has been true since the first version and it is the single rule the whole system rests on. Everything else — your Force, your Stamina, your armour, your regeneration — is calculated from a number you do not control.WHO ASSIGNS IT
Each group's own leadership. The terminal lets an administrator of a
faction set rank for members of that faction, and nobody else's. The mechanism is identical for every group: Sith, Jedi, and the unaffiliated. The same terminal, the same database, the same rights. There is no faction that has more control over rank than another, and none that has less. How a group decides who deserves what is the group's own business, and the groups differ. Most are built around a single leader and a strict hierarchy — one Dark Lord, one Queen, one Grand Master. At least one is built as a council of equals, where the full members share a single title by design, and promotion to it is a collective decision rather than one person's gift. Both are legitimate. A roleplay organisation is entitled to the shape its own fiction gives it.WHAT RANK IS WORTH
Rank is not decoration. Higher rank means a larger Force pool, faster
recovery, less damage taken, more damage dealt in melee, a better chance to deflect a bolt, and from rank 4 upward the ability to break a Force Grip or a Telekinetic Lift. The values are identical across all factions. A rank 4 Jedi and a rank 4 Sith have the same numbers; only the titles differ. That was done deliberately and can be verified in the database.WHY THERE IS NO CAP
The system does not limit how many members of a group may hold the
highest rank. That is a deliberate choice, not an oversight. A cap would be trivial to evade — rank titles are free text, chosen per group, so anyone determined to game it would simply call rank 5 by the name of rank 6 and carry on. It would also force every faction into the same shape, which would break the groups that are honestly organised differently, while barely inconveniencing anyone acting in bad faith. The protection that actually works sits earlier: at admission. Groups screen who joins and who rises — questionnaires, references from established players, time served, activity, and in some groups a council vote. A rank handed out in three weeks is noticed by the people in the scene long before it is noticed by a database.IT IS VISIBLE TO EVERYONE
Rank is written in the floating text above every head. A group whose
every member carried the top title would not be concealing anything; they would be advertising it to every person who walked past. Beyond that, the sim owner can read the rank distribution of every faction from the database with a single query, and does. If a group's structure changes, it will be seen — and if it changes for a good reason, saying so first is always better than being asked about it afterwards.BALANCE BELONGS TO THE SCENE, NOT THE ROSTER
How many high ranks a group holds on paper decides nothing. Who stands
at the gate on a given evening decides everything — and that is never the whole roster. Half of any faction is asleep, at work, or in another timezone entirely. So the place to balance a fight is the OOC meeting before it, not the rank table. Agree how many from the upper ranks each side will field for this event, and the problem is solved for this event. Next time the answer may be different, because different people will be online. This costs nobody anything. No group has to change its structure, no player loses a title they earned, and nobody has to be trusted — the numbers are agreed out loud, in front of everyone, the same way we agree whether a scene may end in death. If a side turns up with more than was agreed, that is a broken agreement and it is dealt with as one. That is a far simpler conversation than arguing about who deserves to be a Darth.IF YOU THINK SOMETHING IS WRONG
Bring it to the sim owner with the names and what you saw. The records
exist: every rank, every change, and every defeat is stored with a timestamp. Suspicion is cheap and evidence is not, and the records are there precisely so that nobody has to rely on suspicion.