AP: Enemy Cap ships and Combat Rank

[Gersidi]

What combat level do you have to be before you see M1, m2+ spawn in assassination and kill missions?

[Black_hole_suN]

I could encounter Akumas in a "Very Hard" mission at as early as Assassin rank..

your personal ship and any ships you have in the sector by the time you accepted the mission and your combat rank determines the strength and number of the spawned enemy..

[Jimmy C]

I can confirm that M1s start showing up at Conqueror, I just reached that rank and they just started appearing. I don't know if the even higher ranks will spawn M2+, but consider: most combat missions involve Pirates, Yaki, or Xenon. Of those, only the Xenon have an M2+.

your personal ship and any ships you have in the sector by the time you accepted the mission and your combat rank determines the strength and number of the spawned enemy..

I think the game randomly chooses from a list of possible combinations depending on your fight rank and mission rating.
When I was at my previous ranking of Battlemaster, there were times when I reloaded (quite a bit) to re-accept a mission in order to get the optimal combination of ships, loot and location.
What I saw was that, if a mission was ranked hard enough to give you an M7, it could swap out the M7 for several M6s and/or M8s. Or it was one M2 for 3 M7s.

[Black_hole_suN]

Oh yeah.. that too..

You could have many M3 and 2 or three M6 in a very hard mission

or you could have 3 or 4 M4 and an M2 in the same mission while flying the same ship...

and I dont think M2+ will spawn in a mission regardless of your combat rank... I could be wrong though

[DrBullwinkle]

I dont think M2+ will spawn in a mission regardless of your combat rank... I could be wrong though

You are correct. Generic missions (Xenon) can spawn J's and K's. No I's.