When playing Elite on MSX, you'll notice that for each destroyed ship you'll obtain points. 100 For an Adder, 30 for a Boa Class Cruiser, 150 for a Thargoid, and so on. On average, not counting the Constrictor and the Asteroid a kill on MSX Elite will award you 73.8 points. To get the rating of Mostly Harmless, at 2,000 points, you will therefore need to have killed some 27 ships. Likewise, you'll get the rating of Poor after about 54 kills or 4,000 points.
On Ian Bell's Elite FAQ (http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/faq.htm), a table notes the number of kills needed to advance the rankings on the C64, BBC and Apple II platforms. These appear to be considerably lower than what is needed on MSX. See the table below.
Nr. Rating BBC kills MSX Score MSX kills --- --------------- --------- --------- --------- 0. Harmless 1. Mostly Harmless 8 2,000 27 2. Poor 16 4,000 54 3. Average 32 8,192 111 4. Above Average 64 16,384 222 5. Competent 128 32,768 444 6. Dangerous 512 131,072 1,775 7. Deadly 2,560 655,360 8,875 8. Elite 6,400 1,638,400 22,188
I have never played this game on any of the other platforms, so I don't know if this is correct, but this table seems to state that the grind to become Elite on MSX is much higher than on the other three platforms, indeed, one would be Elite on a BBC before becoming even Deadly on an MSX.
Does anyone know if all this is true, and if so, what are the numbers for other platforms and why do they differ at all, let alone by so much?
In any case, whenever someone my age tells me they were Elite, I'll ask them what platform.
