"I dont think I ever got above rating Poor though, because I never really grasped how to get the best out of trading"
Elite's rating is solely a measure of the number of kills you have. No trading performance or any other metric included. Here's the table: http://www.elitehomepage.org/faq.htm#A4 As the page says, different versions had different "kill points". At a straight 1.0 on the BCC, Elite would truly be a slog.
I fetched it out of the bargain bin for about $2, probably still one of the better game purchase I've ever made, though the modern Steam sales certainly have some stiff competition. It's been a long time. I'm pretty sure I made Dangerous, I may have made Deadly, I never made Elite, and looking at that page I can see why. Even with more than one point per some kills that's a tall bar to leap without getting bored.
Exactly. I never got enough credits to upgrade my ship much, so kept getting picked off by random pirates. So although the rating was only based on kills, you had to nail the trading to really get anywhere.
I seem to recall (maybe Elite Plus?) that you couldn't progress if you weren't in the first galaxy, ie. if you had used the galactic hyperspace upgrade. In any case I got stuck on Dangerous and that's what I blame.
One of the special missions requires you to start in the first galaxy. If you’ve moved beyond the first galaxy, you can’t trigger that mission. If you warped off the 8th galaxy, you returned to the first galaxy, and would then become eligible for the special mission again.
But as others have noted, it's not necessary to do any of the special missions to gain Elite status.
Elite's rating is solely a measure of the number of kills you have. No trading performance or any other metric included. Here's the table: http://www.elitehomepage.org/faq.htm#A4 As the page says, different versions had different "kill points". At a straight 1.0 on the BCC, Elite would truly be a slog.
I fetched it out of the bargain bin for about $2, probably still one of the better game purchase I've ever made, though the modern Steam sales certainly have some stiff competition. It's been a long time. I'm pretty sure I made Dangerous, I may have made Deadly, I never made Elite, and looking at that page I can see why. Even with more than one point per some kills that's a tall bar to leap without getting bored.