While I am still learning, I think it is safe to say it is official. We now have a fully ranked (ribbons, XP and attachments) Hardcore BF2042 server. @Leslie#5689 @FrostyPanda0288#0869 and myself ran through and tested it. Only complaint so far is vehicles (because it is RUSH) however it was literally a 2v2 / 3v3 the whole time, and with coordination it was easy for me to “hack” and steal their tank. Maybe in smaller games if someone gets a chopper or a tank it can unbalance the game, but I can easily see 2 or 3 folks taking that tank away and balancing the game back out.
In a 16v16 game, I could totally see how it would almost be NEEDED to get up and have extra fire power.

Since you cannot change these settings live I want to keep this one setup as is because randoms were actually joining because it was basically ranked (fully setup for all the perks) but you can NOT have AI enabled for it to work that way. As soon as you enable BOTS the server goes straight to XP only.

I know we don’t exactly have enough that have played to put up a vote, but do want to point out, in order for the server to show up fully ranked with ribbons and weapon master (upgrading weapons) you can NOT have AI enabled so it will require us to “fill the server” like in the old dedicated days (to prevent BOT farming).

@Leslie#5689 and myself literally did 1v1 in a our 16v16 server to confirm this. After 3 or 4 games, we didnt get anything but XP only. Once I disabled the AI (bots) we did the same thing and unlocked ribbons, and weapon attachments (we were both working on the LMG) and noticed random players started joining. So…… Long story short, this formula does work.