Being the vain person that I am, I have a love of all things that shine and dangle…this has led me to pursue building up a nice collection of medals within the Jumpgate universe.

Medals are not only nice to look at , but they bring experience point awards as well.

Please note that I am using the American spellings as used on JOSSH.

There are 10 basic skill medals, a Skill Star and a Golry Star:

The first 8 form part of the Basic Skill Set required to obtain a Skill Star (below) whilst the final two are slightly different from the rest.

The Basic Skill Set medals (the first 8) are different to other medals in that they clear-down and restart once you get all 8 and are awarded a Skill Star. Each time this happens, you move up a Basic Skill Level (different to pilot level). 5 skill stars and you are given a Glory Star.

The table works out like this:

 This pattern continues upwards so you would eventually get something like this:

The units required are (in case you didn’t spot it) the square of the Basic Skill Level.

The units are also cumulative. So to obtain your level 5 "Spirit of Unity" you have to have accumulated a total of 25 flux kills and not 25 more than for the level 4 (which would be 41). The only exception to this appears to be the Miner's Heart which appears to require you to mine another 25 instead of a total of 25 (not confirmed on this yet).

The other thing to note that when you obtain a skill star and the medals reset, you don't get the next basic skill level until you do that action again. This means that sometimes you will complete a skill star and the next time you jump through a gate, you will get the "Leap of Faith" medal - if you have already secured enough jumps to obtain the medal.

What generally happens is that because most people kill flux, jump, dock, complete missions and spend time in the game, they will get these basic medals easily. The ones that people usually have to "catch up on" to get their next skill star are: Miner's Heart, Path of Light, Tactical Pride (mining, beacons and missile hits).

I have already mentioned the non-cumulative requirement for the "Miner's Heart", but also, the path of light requires you to "hold a beacon for at least 20 mins" to qualify as a controlled beacon.

The "Tactical Pride" medal is for missile "hits" rather than missile "kills". By far the best way to boost your missile hits is to load up with Cutlass missiles. Whilst these don't pack a huge punch (it takes 3 to kill a c1 - c3), they have the advantage of having proximity fuses which means they almost always hit c1 - c5.

Often when I was in need of a number of hits to get my next TP medal, I would load up with as many cutlass missiles as I could and go out and fire em at any flux I could find. The best way is to be stationary and wait until a flux is 5k from you. Then fire off 3 missiles in quick succession. Assuming we are talking about c1-c5 here, all 3 missiles will hit on their outward track (ie they won't go past and have to turn around).

These are the only 2 basic skill medals that do not count towards a skill star, and they don't reset when you get one.

The Flame of Courage is awarded when you have collected a total of 5000 credits in bounty. Experience given 2500.

The Merit of Defense is awarded when you rip a pilot of an opposing faction. Experience earned 500.

There are 4 medals for being a cash-hungry hoarder:

Very often, people will be awarded these medals when they die and return to a station in their pod. They are then handed the cash from the insurance company and this puts them over the requirement for the medal.

The "easiest" way to get these medals is to ask a friendly high-level pilot with sufficient credits to "lend" them too you so that you get the medal…then hand them back (or don't hand them back and lose a friend).

Not much to say here really. You just need to kill the required number of flux. There are no bonuses for how big the flux are...even a c10 eel only adds 1 to your total.

 There are 7 Unity Stripe medals:

At time of writing this (25^th January 2002) No-one has got more than a US IV. I currently hold a US II (only 500 more kills to go to US III and I am 35 in the rankings for total flux kills.

I cover these in "NJ_Sid's Mining Guide" but to summarise here:

These medals are for "units of ore sold in one transaction", so you need to be in a tow to achieve them. There are 9 medals in all which are 3 different quantities for 3 ore types:

The most efficient way to do this is to mine 450 units of the relevant ore straight off and then sell it, which will give you all 3 medals for that ore in one go.

The mentoring system was designed to assist new pilots (newbies or n00bs) to learn the intricacies of the galaxy.To become a mentor for someone you simply need to send a mentoring offer to the particular pilot by using the following command in chat: /mentor JoeBloggs

It is polite to ask if they want a mentor before you send the offer (but some don't). If they accept this they are now your student. Everytime they earn some experience you will get a 10% bonus whilst you are online and 5% if they are online without you. They do not need to be in the same sector as you at any point. (e.g. If they kill a c1, they get 300exp and you get 30exp if online and 15exp if you are offline)

To list your current students you type: /students

If you wish to drop a student at anytime, you type: /mentoroff JoeBloggs

If they wish to get rid of you being their mentor they type: /mentoroff

NOTE: Mentoring only works until a student pilot reaches level 10

There are 3 medals to get based on the mentoring system in JumpGate:

There are 5 Nova Medals and 3 Supernova medals:

PR points are gained for successfully completing missions on behalf of a faction. You usually get 3 points per mission up to a PR of 100. After that you get 2 points per mission (this does seem to vary occasionally though).

The rating system is such that whilst you have a PR below 100, it will not fall over time. Once you have a PR above 100 with a faction, that rating will fall at a rate of 1PR point per hour logged on until it gets back to 100. The only way for your PR to fall below 100 once it has been over it is to fail missions or kill pilots of the respective faction.

Probably the easiest way to obtain high political ratings in the 3 main factions is to repeatedly run transports between the closest two stations.

For the Amethyst Nova (Amanath), I actually went fluxxing around the Amanath "Loop" (Gyre, Aman Hook, Last Parsec, Sea of Shadows, The Split). There are quite often special TRI missions or Faction Missions in Amanathi space, sometimes with ridiculous experience rewards. Taking these missions can help you to level as well as boost PR.

For the Amber Nova (Hyperial), I spent a lot of time mining. There are a good lot of Semifluxor roids in Hyperial Space and I was able to build up a good deal of cash at the same time as earning PR points. It is also possible to mine Common Metals and Radioactive roids in Hyperial (especially since I have put my mining locations into the Squad Rotacol Database pool). This means that you can (if you have sufficient cargo space) mine 3 lots of different ore in one trip, return to Hyperial and get 3 lots of PR mission points by taking mining missions one after the other (see my mining guide).

These medals are simple enough to understand, but quite difficult to get ;)

The medals are awarded for earning money as a bounty hunter, which is often a risky prospect (particularly in terms of getting abuse hurled at you.)

Note that the ripping of low-level (below 10) pilots with temporary bounties is not considered ethical by squad Red-Dwarfers.

Considering how dangerous it is to get these medals, the experience reward is low.

The Pendant Medals for artefact hunting are a recent (at time of writing) addition to the Jumpgate world. These medals are awarded to pilots for retrieving pre-collapse artefacts from deep-space wreckage.

There are 4 pendants and a combination star medal.

 These are relatively easy to get, but involve an element of luck.

 For more information on Artefact Hunting / Retrieval, please see my guide.

These medals are awarded for attaining certain ranks within a certain number of duty hours.

There are 3 medals available:

NJ_Sid