Influence Increase When Ranking Up

[James Andrew Johnson]

Today I went to one of the multiple online calculators to determine my Q7 influence per hit. It's a fairly straightforward calculation, but something didn't seem quite right. When I changed my rank in the calculator, my influence did not change by 5% as I had been led to believe. In fact, my Q7 influence per hit only changed by about 2% for a rank increase or decrease. This prompted me to take a look at the influence calculation here:

Code:

I = 10 × (1 + S/400) × (1 + R/5) × (1 + FirePower/100)

I: Influence on the hit
R: Value of the Rank
S: Strength

Each rank, R in this equation, is given a sequential number from 1 to 69 described here. But this equation does not yield the "+5%" rank bonus. By this equation, the influence increase when ranking up can be found by taking the ratio of this equation using R+1 to this equation using R and then subtracting 1 to find the percentage increase in influence. This boils down to the following equation for the influence increase when ranking up:

Code:

((6 + R)/(5 + R) - 1) x 100%

This equation only yields about a 5% increase when ranking up to level 15 (Lieutenant*) when R = 14. At lower ranks the increase in influence when ranking up is higher while at higher ranks the increase in influence when ranking up is lower. The following plot shows the influence increase when ranking up for all ranks, from 1 (recruit) to 69 (Titan***).



In short, when you rank up you should not expect your influence per hit to go up by 5%. Especially at the higher ranks, your influence will increase by nowhere near 5% when ranking up. That's not to say that ranking up isn't important, but ranking up simply does not yield a "+5% rank bonus on attack" that we were led to believe.