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I'm up to Operation Firestorm but still just a Commander. As a destroyer captain I've found things less than great, often outmatched against heavier or more numerous opponents and have had more than my share of destroyers shot out from under me. To move up to cruiser command you need to be a captain, 20,000 points. I'm currently sitting at about 17,200 points and earning points at what seems like a snail's pace. Having grown weary of driving a destroyer I've switched back to fighters, where I seem to earn maybe 200 points a mission if I'm lucky.

Anybody notice any good point grabbers? Aside from blasting carriers obviously, certain training or combat mission types that seem to gleam more points?

Carriers. Destroy them. ~1700 from destroying a goliath and about 2500 ish from taking out a Dragon class. That's how I got to Captain so quickly. Make a point of taking out carriers once you've destroyed everything else. What I did was keep replaying a couple of the more interesting missions in the first campaign. Specifically the ones where the two enemy carriers are meeting up. Got a ton of points from those (because there are lots of enemy cap ships to kill plus fighters for bonuses). Shouldn't take more than a couple of missions if you put some effort into it. So you can play with Cruisers with the last 3 camps.
It is possible to get captain quickly and relatively easily if you use the right tactics. It's just hard to explain those tactics.

Note: If a team-mate makes the kill, you still get some points. But I don't think it's as many points.

along with Moriartie's point you can also get points for commanding your squadron. More commands equal more points and the likelihood of receiving one of the command awards.

This example is from the first day of Op Firestorm...I killed almost nothing, but commanded the smaller caps to engage the mines and larger to assualt the station. Then we chased down a few rouges, I commanded a flank by the faster DDs and voila, 1830 points for commanding.

like Moriartie also said, there are 1000 strategies out there...I view this as a type of advanced 3D chess.

FINAL SCORE 'MSN-001 Strike Station Aram Station'
Name              Kill1  Kill2  Died   Colls  Points  Cmd Pts
----------------  -----  -----  -----  -----  ------  ------
Atlas                 0      0      0      0       0     100
Loyalty              0      0      0      0       0       0
Vernor               0      0      0      0       0       0
Nichols              0      0      0      0       0       0
Stormwind          1      0      0      0     200    1830
Justice              3      2      0      0    3100       0
Truth                2     13      0      0     860       0
Hoffman            0      0      0      0       0       0
Bear                 0      0      0      0       0     220
Chance             2      0      0      1      40       0
Gamma             3      1      0      0      80       0
Lawrence         11      6      0      0     360       0

sidenote...although Bear, Chance, Gamma and Lawrence were not in my CA group, I was able to issue orders to them because their DESRON fell below me in the chain of command.

After some digging I found an "easy promotion points" mission.

The single mission "Hounds and Hunters", where you command the Destroyer Wraith on a simple search and destroy of two destroyers and two frigates, can earn on average like 1,000 points. I ran it like 3 times, earning 1,600 points on one occasion. Which bounded me up to the rank of Captain.

[8D]