I'm a vb newb, so please... bear with my stupid questions .

I'm currently the web guy for my clan, and we've decided to move a vb based website. There are a couple of things that many members expect, and I'm not sure how to implement in vb, so I was hoping you all would have some suggestions. Thanks a lot for listening .

We've set up ranks (military ones) assigning each rank a usergroup. We used the following permissions for each group - generals with admin, officers with smod, and enlisted with just registered members. We have 21 ranks, spread fairly equally among those three types. However there are a few issues:

1. Primarily, only generals (admins) can promote othe users. Is there a way I can make it so that officers(mods) can promote people through all the enlisted (reg members) through their ranks? Basically allow smods to make usergroup changes.
2. All of the diffrent groups (gen, off, enlisted) are equal to each other within their each level of access (admin, smod, reg mem). Is there a way I can make the different usergroups within one access level (smods for ex) be ranked higher than one another?
3. For the members page is their I can have it show up as being ranked by usergroup? That way Commander (root admin) is at the top, and Recruit is at the bottom, and everything else in the middle are in the correct order.

Again, the help is appreciated .

EDIT: Oh, one additional question - how can I post more than 4 images in a post? I found one posting that said it would require a extension, but I haven't been able to find a suitable one. Thanks.

EDIT2: Ok forget the previous added question. Figured that out ;). One other question to add - Is there a way I can have someone who is inactive for X number of days automatically be promoted to a certain usergroup? Thanks.

EDIT3: Well... if you have suggestions for any of these I would be greatful. Don't feel like ya need to know how to do everything I'm wondering about. Every bit helps me .