Nisgeis, you've got some interesting ideas there for testing!!
You would be right to try those ideas for testing the "what or how" in figuring the awards calculations. It's just the system seems to work about right (whatever the process) for giving medals once the right medal order was figured out (I think). The process would be suspect of problems if a Coastal Merchant produced a larger award then say a Heavy Cruiser warship. However, as far as I know this is not the case. What I really need is some regular game play results with several patrols under the belt to see if the medals are still reasonably issued. I'm fairly certain the lower half of medals preform about right but, I'm concerned about the upper medals like the Silver Star, Navy Cross, The Congressional Medal of Honor being in a reasonable order for issue.