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[Mondaymonkey]

Here we are, most of us agreeing that having multiple destroyers immediately is too much for new players, and then Megas comes in and says we should get 2 cruisers in the tutorial...

Or better give a couple of Paragons instead.

Spoiler

Joke

[close]

Aside of jokes, It's not that bad idea. I mean, give player to pilot some well-equipped cap, to feel what it is and see what is balanced loadout. Off course, that cap should be removed at the end. Some games uses that trick to show endgame content in tutorial. Not sure, will it fit SS or not.

[Grievous69]

You don't need a capital ship to show what a balanced loadout should look like. Sure it's more obvious when you look at it because of all the weapons but same can be achieved with a destroyer. Put some kinetic weapons, some explosive ones, PD in remaining slots, max out the vents and improvise with the OP that's left. Probably wise to teach new players to put Reinforced bulkheads on most ships since it's so useful.

I actually kinda like the light cruiser start (when skipping tutorial I mean), makes more sense than straight out having an Apogee.

[Mondaymonkey]

Probably wise to teach new players to put Reinforced bulkheads on most ships since it's so useful.

That definitely should be in tutorial. Is it now? (real question, I do not remember).

Although, +40% HP might be musthave for newbie, but I do not remember when did I last time used it...

[SCC]

I actually was thinking about giving the player 4 combat ships for the final battle of the tutorial: a Mule, a Shepherd, a Wolf and a Kite (well, I would have preferred a Lasher instead of the Wolf, but it's not that important), with difficulty adjusted accordingly. Player would pilot the Wolf and the Kite would be their wingman, while the Mule and the Shepherd distract the enemy fleet and give the player time to pick their engagements. And also a non-combat Dram to help with fuel needs.

[Grievous69]

Although, +40% HP might be musthave for newbie, but I do not remember when did I last time used it...

I honestly don't care that much about that part, guaranteed recovery is what makes it very good, along with affordable OP cost.

[Mondaymonkey]

I honestly don't care that much about that part, guaranteed recovery is what makes it very good, along with affordable OP cost.

And that is the reason why I do not use it: it can be replaced with officers and skills.

But new players does not have many officers or skills, so yeah, musthave, and +40% HP would not be superfluous.

[Alex]

I appreciate the feedback! This in particular - overwhelming the player with too many new ships - isn't something I was thinking about, and I'll keep it in mind. That said, one of the goals of the tutorial is to introduce the idea of using junk ships that don't matter too much one way or the other - how they're outfitted, or ultimately if they even make it through the fight.

What I ended up doing was I sold all these aforementioned ships, and started buying new ships one at a time to fill whatever need I had once I got the credits. I could guess from the exchange rates that this was not an optimal way to play the game, but it was a way to keep me invested. Now it's my fleet, put together piece by piece and each for a purpose I thought of. It's undoubtedly far from perfect as I have no clue what I'm doing, but at least I know what the plan is. I don't feel like I was just dumped a bunch of ships and told to go watch the fireworks anymore.

(I think you actually did the right thing there - while it's possible to keep all of the ships you've salvaged, they are a supply drain, and not all of them are going to pull their weight, so getting rid of them is a reasonable move to make! Perhaps the tutorial can get explicit about this point somewhere, hmm...)

[DatonKallandor]

Probably wise to teach new players to put Reinforced bulkheads on most ships since it's so useful.

That definitely should be in tutorial. Is it now? (real question, I do not remember).

Although, +40% HP might be musthave for newbie, but I do not remember when did I last time used it...

The tutorial tells the player to use auto-fit, which uses always-Bulkhead by default I believe.

[Morrokain]

For a really, really ridiculously in-depth explanation as to why its really not a good idea to get big ships right away, see:

https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=18068.15

 - Bottom of the second page.

It also talks about progression as a whole, which can also be considered pacing, as Grievous69 already mentioned. And it addresses how RNG affects it in both positive and negative ways.

I think the idea of the tutorial is less to let players avoid the hazards of the game completely and more to teach them about them in a controlled way so that too many factors don't pile on immediately. Once the player gets practice with the basics (needs to be more than one brief mission) then those particular game skills will be useful when "a wrench is thrown into the gears" by factors they haven't accounted for later. Things like storms, pirate ambushes, star hazards, etc.

Part of the reason I think the tutorial doesn't scale well currently is the transition from a couple of frigates (and the associated costs of deployment, maintenance and hazard impact) to a moderately sized fleet right before the tutorial ends. So there is no real example for the newbie player on how this affects them until they are thrust into the "real sector."

What is taught in a controlled way:

 - Basic maintenance and supplies. (Important to note that this is only in the smallest sense and very, very briefly.)
 - Salvaging debris fields.
 - Combat (duh).
 - Sneaking into a market and conversing with NPCs.
 - Derelict scavenging and guardians respectively.
 - Salvaging derelict ships.
 - Possibly corona hazard. (Important to note that it is not guaranteed!)
 - Random faction bounties. (Again, optional and probably the hardest kind of random mission to gain value from if you don't know how to pick targets well.)
 - Fuel (Kind of. It points things out but doesn't really test the player at all.)


What isn't taught by the tutorial:

 - Reading the sector map and intel section when selecting missions (to try and gauge their overall difficulty).
 - Any kind of category 2 hazard. Those will likely hit new players like a truck when they get into hyperspace and start exploring. Pretty much an instant reload the first time for most players.
 - What to expect while outside the core and what kinds of missions out there generally look like.
 - How to avoid larger fleets and how to catch smaller fleets reliably. (One brief mission isn't enough practice since this is a core mechanic.)
 - The fact that AI cores are dangerous to carry around. (This is actually a misleading part of the tutorial - though a cool narrative lever.)
 - The fact that missions have extremely variable difficulty and cost a lot of resources to even attempt. This one is probably the largest factor in newbie rage, I'd imagine.
 - Smuggling or purchasing from the black market.
 - How to trade cost efficiently.
 - Commissions and, more importantly, their downsides.
 - Pirate ambushes in sensor dampening areas such as nebulae.
 - Individual pirate bounties and their average strength.
 - Really anything about the sector economy and how the player can affect it.
 - How ship/fleet size affects the cost of surviving and the cost to attempt missions. It's an exponential scale and so catches players off guard.
 - How to outfit a ship.
 - How to make player ships reliably recoverable.

Now I don't think all of these need a dedicated tutorial mission or anything, but one thing to address here is that instead of a brief mission to teach X mechanic and then move to the Y mechanic mission, etc, it would be better to layer on the learning similar to how a student learns math.

Once you get to the next level of advancement, the basics you learned before don't become irrelevant or go away. You are building on top of previously learned skills. I feel like the tutorial should similarly try and add a mechanic to the equation rather than move to the next one, if that makes sense. It increases core mechanics practice without the need for a ton of dedicated missions because each new mission teaches both the new mechanic and assumes the players still have the skills from the last mechanic that was practiced.

Obviously some of the core mechanics, like maintenance and deployment costs, naturally do this already. But a lot of them are situational. Therefore, one practice attempt at a very easy level isn't really preparing players for the far more variable and potentially difficult versions of the same thing in the sector at large.

[Megas]

I honestly don't care that much about that part, guaranteed recovery is what makes it very good, along with affordable OP cost.

And that is the reason why I do not use it: it can be replaced with officers and skills.

But new players does not have many officers or skills, so yeah, musthave, and +40% HP would not be superfluous.

That is later in the game.  When starting, officers for all ships is not an option.  Neither are skills in the first few fights, before player has earned enough.

For Reinforced Bulkheads, I use it solely for the guaranteed recovery.  Without it, I would save-scum the game to replay until losses are acceptable.  Losing ships (and their weapons) when I cannot afford to lose money really hurts.

[Megas]

I actually kinda like the light cruiser start (when skipping tutorial I mean), makes more sense than straight out having an Apogee.

I guess Apogee was supposed to be like a light cruiser at 18 DP, but it is too powerful to be worth 18 DP once it gets plasma cannon and/or Locusts (much like Aurora is too weak to be 30 DP).  20 DP or a little over is more like it.  I do like Apogee start because I get early-game hell over with as quickly as possible, and Apogee never becomes obsolete.  (Early-game is my least favorite part of the game.  Endgame is my most favorite part of the game.)

Falcon (and I guess Fury) would be nice because they have burn 9 and will not slow down your fleet early.

[Mondaymonkey]

I guess Apogee was supposed to be like a light cruiser at 18 DP, but it is too powerful to be worth 18 DP once it gets plasma cannon and/or Locusts (much like Aurora is too weak to be 30 DP).

I would say 22 for Apogee and 25 for Aurora. Or Aurora need to have a Large hardpoint for it's 30DP.

But that is way off the topic.

[intrinsic_parity]

I don't think there needs to be an explicit tutorial for a lot of mechanics, sometimes it is cleaner to just highlight the feedback for a mechanic the first time it occurs. For instance, the first time a player flies into a hyperspace storm or corona, pause the campaign layer and put a big arrow+text box prompting the player to open the fleet screen and see the reduced CR on their ships and then another bit of text explaining that it costs supplies to restore CR and so the player should make sure they have enough supplies to deal with hazards when traveling in hyperspace. I think it's ok for he player to run into that problem and deal with the consequences or reload, as long as it's clear what they did to cause the problem and how they can fix or avoid it. I think there are lots of mechanics that can be explained with a 'the first time this happens' text box to make it clear how consequences and choices are connected and how the player can respond to improve the outcome. I think it's also valuable to give players information about mechanics when they actually encounter them in the game rather than in a big dump of information at the beginning or in some scripted series of events.

I think the two core mechanics that really need some serious tutorials are outfitting and sensors/stealth.

I suppose outfitting could be explained with warning messages like 'this load out lacks shield/armor damage'  or 'this load out has high weapon flux relative to dissipation' along with suggestions in the tooltip about how to improve that (add kinetic/flux efficient damage, add HE/high damage per shot weapons, add vents or use less flux intensive weapons etc.) It might be better to just have a scripted tutorial where the game prompts you to make certain load outs and then explains the pluses and minuses before letting you fly then in the sim. You probably also want an explanation of safe loadouts for the AI as well. To be honest, it might be best to roll that into the advanced combat tutorial in the menu (or add another tutorial) because understanding outfitting and the combat mechanics really go hand in hand.

Sensors and stealth seem a lot harder to script since the player won't necessarily do the behavior that highlights the effect of the choices the player is making. If it was done as a tutorial, it would have to be something like a simulation where the player gets to try and sneak into a port a bunch of times with different fleets. It might be better to just have little videos or something where the player is shown how certain d-mods and hull mods affect sensor and burn stats, and what that actually looks like when trying to sneak into a port or evade a patrol.

Missions are really hard to tutorialize because the players ability to succeed at a mission depends on so many different factors. I think some warnings like 'you need to sneak into a port to complete this' or 'you will need at least x fuel and x supplies' could be helpful, but I think the player just needs to learn to evaluate mission difficulty by playing missions and learning the mechanics and ships.

[xenoargh]

Personally, I think the game should have several options to turn on / off at any time during play.

Easy should consist of:

*Quartered cost in Supplies and Fuel for all CR recovery.
*Half price for crew costs.
*Doubled loot, or doubled prices for loot taken.
*Current damage system.

These should be optional, but they'd help a lot, by reducing the amount of time players spend concentrating on basic logistics, and emphasizing the core loop of the Fun.  Yes, it'd be Easy Mode; that's kind of the point.

[poika]

Sorry for necroing, but I realized I never actually returned to this thread after posting it.

I appreciate the feedback! This in particular - overwhelming the player with too many new ships - isn't something I was thinking about, and I'll keep it in mind. That said, one of the goals of the tutorial is to introduce the idea of using junk ships that don't matter too much one way or the other - how they're outfitted, or ultimately if they even make it through the fight.

I'm glad you felt that way. Like I said, I have since overcome these problems myself, but I wanted to write them down while they were still fresh in my mind. And I'm glad I did, because having just re-installed the newest version of the game and gone through the tutorials again, I did not experience them the same way a second time knowing already what to expect.

Nevertheless, what you ask is barely possible. It is theoretically possible to fit all vital information in proper tutorial and give it to player in small pieces one by one. But that would be longest and most boring tutorial ever. And I doubt it helps.

I actually didn't think the tutorial needed more information. Simply that the size your fleet, and as a consequence the size of the engagements, should probably grow a little more gradually.

It would be "boring" to a veteran, maybe, but not a new player completely unfamiliar with the mechanics - unless the actual content of the tutorial was boring and didn't scale correctly.

With the tutorial already being optional at the start of each new save, I think it would be fair to just design it for the newcomers, and balance the start so that veterans don't need to or even be incentivized to play through it again just so it can be purely designed around the needs of a new player.

I think "easy" difficulty should really be easy, to give player time to understand how it works.

I'm personally not in favor of a "baby mode". I think the game is already very fair with letting you fail and start over again, learning in the process. The only "problem" is a new player possibly struggling early on, but coddling them to success by tweaking the values under the hood does not seem like the solution to me.

When did you last time talked to casual players? There ane no such thing as "too easy" for them. And if player thinks game is too easy - he probably not that casual and should change difficulty.

Truth be told I doubt this game will ever be the next smash hit for grandma on her iPad (no offense to any grandmothers on the forums). Not having it on major storefronts is already a deal breaking hurdle for that crowd. I would not put too many resources into trying to pander to that hypothetical crowd.

Best extended tutorial is to dive into sim from missions and not come out until you can reliably pilot whatever and beat most ships 1 size larger in duel (outside non-combat/semi-combat ships or particularly bad match-ups and preferably without relying on SO/Sabots).

I agree wholeheartedly. I spent many hours in combat sims when starting out, and it's probably what sold me on the game. At first I felt discouraged being asked to jeopardize my fleet and economy to fight, not even being comfortable with the controls. I often felt that an experience in which I learned a lot would also punish me when it came to the strict terms of "winning" the game. That is before I fully discovered and appreciated the combat simulations. Playing extensive combat sims with each ship gave me a sense of familiarity and confidence that made me invested rather than feeling like I was getting slapped across the wrist for trying to learn.

As a side note, I don't think it should be taken for granted that this feature is there. Plenty of games don't include a similiar feature. If anything I think it should be highlighted more during the tutorial, as it truly is a crucial part of learning the game.

It might be worth considering divorcing the tutorial from the game entirely, and have it as it's own self contained "module" that can be invoked from the game menu as required.

As it currently exists there are both. And I agree, it is a little odd. However I can see the value of handholding new players into the campaign, as I dislike when games get you invested during a long tutorial, and then scrap everything you've just worked for to have you start from the beginning after the tutorial is finished.

Part of the reason I think the tutorial doesn't scale well currently is the transition from a couple of frigates (and the associated costs of deployment, maintenance and hazard impact) to a moderately sized fleet right before the tutorial ends. So there is no real example for the newbie player on how this affects them until they are thrust into the "real sector."

I think this is a good way to summarize the feeling I had when I was provoked to start this thread.

I don't think there needs to be an explicit tutorial for a lot of mechanics, sometimes it is cleaner to just highlight the feedback for a mechanic the first time it occurs.

That does sound like a good (and tried and tested) way to tutorialize some concepts without dragging the game down with info dumps.

I think the two core mechanics that really need some serious tutorials are outfitting and sensors/stealth.

I suppose outfitting could be explained with warning messages like 'this load out lacks shield/armor damage'  or 'this load out has high weapon flux relative to dissipation' along with suggestions in the tooltip about how to improve that (add kinetic/flux efficient damage, add HE/high damage per shot weapons, add vents or use less flux intensive weapons etc.)

I agree that I still don't think I fully understand or at least feel comfortable with sensors or stealth (or even capable of approximating the distances on the main campaign screen despite the tooltips). In regards to the outfitting you have a legitimate concern. However I think learning how to equip your fleet might just "be the game", and trying to tutorialize proper balancing of armaments might be too complex and perhaps in part taking away from the sense of the player learning and playing the game for themselves.

---

As a side note, while we're talking about tutorials. I think the game still currently lacks any proper introduction to colonies. I understand that by the time it becomes relevant the game is way past tutorializing, but truth be told as someone who just picked up the game based on a few screenshots and never read any wikis or watched any playthroughs before playing it myself, I didn't even know that was a feature. In-game the information about it is very scarse. You're basically left to figure everything out for yourself. Which is fine to a degree, but really you're not even made familiar with the UI or the concepts that factor into colony management unless you consult third party resources which I do find problematic.