Personally, I think there needs to be more breadcrumbs pointing to the guaranteed military contact on Coatl.
Does that guy have medium importance? If so, he is worthless because he cannot offer the Omega bounty.
Well, if we're discussing this in the context of early game bounty scaling, I would say he's not worthless. He's a replacement for intel bounties, which now that I think about it, also don't get you any closer to the Omega bounty. You only need a single high or very high contact for that bounty. I personally am happy when I can get multiple military contacts in one station, or at least systems next to each other, as that helps me grab 2 contracts at the same time, with a tiny bit of control over direction (i.e. either more difficult or same difficult mixtures). May only go out with 1, but I get 4 possible locations, and sometimes I get lucky with 2 in the same direction.
If I am dying for guaranteed military contact, I grab Rayan Arroyo at Eochu Bres along the main questline. Of course, that is not a good option for those commissioned with a faction hostile to Tri-Tachyon. (I avoid commission because I build my first colony early and I do not want accessibility lost because of faction politics.)
Yeah, that's what I typically do, and run into the same problem if I'm not doing a Tri-tach or no commission run.
I don't think they could come up with any good builds, but they could certainly use autofit, which would produce better results than autofit in early game with no hullmods or weapons.
Fair point, autofit would likely get them something useable with an end game pile of weapons.
Although depending on how early is early game we are talking, autofit can get you something, as it's a bit of an exaggeration to say you start with no hullmods and no weapons. All planets stock some small weapons (light autocannons, machine guns, a smattering of small mount missiles), so auto fit on something like a Lasher or Centurion usually comes out at least usable. Wolf might be stuck with a Mining Blaster as it's medium energy mount though. Although, against typical early game pirate fleets, a Mining Blaster will work. Might even be a better choice against an Enforcer led frigate pack of Cerberi . You also start knowing some key hullmods, including Safety Overrides, Hardened Subsystems, Unstable Injector, Reinforced Bulkheads, and for cruisers and capitals, Dedicated Targeting Core.
Destroyers start to be a bit more iffy with medium mounts, especially missiles, which are RNG to find in the blackmarket. Although Arbalests and Heavy Mortars are very common, so an Enforcer or Hammerhead can likely be autofit without too much trouble. Something like a Manticore, less so. Mid-game cruisers and capitals are definitely where an autofit without a pile of saved weapons is going to potentially start under fitting badly.
To be honest, after thinking about it a bit more, an equal 240 dp vs 240 dp fight with autofitted ships that doesn't abuse the OP stuff like hyperions could be harder than an equal early game fight where you can just savescum once or twice and get lucky.
Perhaps I misunderstood what people meant by playing around at end game. If we're talking about trouncing 200k bounties/only 240 DP worth of NPC faction ships or pirates, then yeah, I'll admit that is a bit of reverse difficulty curve since you can simply deploy an equal quality fleet and player decision making will probably make up the difference. Since 240 DP fleets start popping up at the 200k bounty level. On the other hand, that's at the level of deploying a Hammerhead, Drover, and 2 frigates to take out a pair of frigates (i.e. fast start versus an initial pirate fleet in Corvus). Complete over deploy effectively in both cases. At the 300k bounty level you're looking at something like 350-400 DP in the opposing fleet total. So it's not just 240 DP vs 240 DP, but 240 DP with half again as many reserves.
I guess I was thinking things like fully farmed (so leveled up) Ordos from a red system, Double Tesseract, or the Tesseract bounty as typical end game fights. Tesseract is like 320 DP worth of all alpha core Ordo plus the Tesseract on top, against your initial 160 DP fleet deployment (which could go up to 240 DP if you realized you needed to add fast point cappers to your fleet, and how to fit those point cappers, but that takes experience). That bounty fleet could certainly be a rude awakening for players used to NPC faction fleets or even some mid-level Ordos with only a single Radiant, even with experience.
I will also throw out there that there are no safety override Hyperion autofits. Possibly Alex wants people to stumble upon that particular combination instead of being handed it. So you kind of have to know about the SO + teleport interaction to realize why it's so survivable.
1. Do the combat tutorial
2. Jump to missions screen to learn without penalty
3. Begin a normal campaign
That could work, although missions to campaign is a bit jarring, as you have a whole new skillset you need to learn, and your skills of fitting a large fleet of elite ships with every weapon available are no longer going to help you. I don't think missions should be recommended to new players. They are disconnected from what a new player will face at the start, and they force you to learn information like memorizing every weapon that just isn't helpful in campaign. For instance you will almost never see a proximity launcher.
IMO if you do the tutorial, yes you should slowly unlock features as you go. An automatic fleet command AI till the game explains that to you sounds good.
Hmm. I would have thought doing the missions first would count as unlocking game features as you go as opposed to being a jarring whole new skillset. I see it as a feature instead of a bug.
You have all the campaign skills locked away, and focus on "unlocking" understanding how combat works without any worry about deploying too much and running out of supplies, or having your ships completely destroyed, or getting completely off script and flying around in the upper right of the map and running out of supplies.
Also, you don't need to do any fitting at all to complete all the missions. You just have to understand how to use your ships. All of the missions can be completed with default fits. In fact, I would expect most beginners to jump straight to the big Play Mission button instead of the smaller refit button. Or perhaps check out refit, mess with it a little bit, and then hit reset afterwards, since they're not sure of what they are doing, and then hit Play Mission. The fact you can play with fits is merely a great bonus, not the primary point.
An automatic fleet AI controlling a much larger fleet around my ship would be a terrible learning experience for me. What would you expect me to take away from piloting, say, a Wolf in a much larger fleet that is ensuring my side doesn't lose? What is the lesson you're trying to communicate to me? I suppose if I get out of position in a Wolf against a much larger fleet, I'm dead. Maybe that is the takeaway? Don't fly far in front of your fleet and then take the enemy fleet alpha strike? Although I suppose if I know what I'm doing, I can bait a first volley of missiles and fighters that way - but that means conserving my phase skimmer charges for the retreat instead of for the closing. Perhaps an advanced concept?
In my opinion, the best place to learn how to pilot a ship is in a small 1 on 1, or even a 2 on 1 with the 2nd ship on your side being purely a distraction as opposed to a kill ship. Anything else is just adding un-needed distractions to what the player should be focusing on to get better at the game, or even worse, doing the killing before the player has a chance to do or learn anything. If you can complete the tutorial by walking away from the computer, my guess is it isn't teaching much. I'm wondering if that is why Alex doesn't explicitly introduce the autopilot button, as far as I can remember.
At some point, you are going to have to turn fleet control over to the player, and at that point, I feel small is better, like a 1 or 2 ship fleet, so as not to be overwhelming. If you do the 1, 1, 1 start (Wolf with Kite and officer into tutorial) this is what you get out of the campaign tutorial. A 2 on 1 situation. Then later, it's 2 on 3 really terrible unshielded ships. Then you jump up to 6 ships. Which are fighting better equipped and larger opposition. Which if you haven't had issues with the first two fights, is not an unreasonable thing to do. It is also the same progression the missions go through.
The way the missions scale up look along the lines of what I'd want from a fully fleshed, hand holding combat tutorial. They're not perfect, but they are certainly not bad. And they are very easy to change at this stage if people have suggestions.
The very first mission from the menu is literally 2 frigates on your side versus a destroyer. So that is a 2 on 1 situation, although arguably a bit harder than the campaign start. No need for an automatic fleet command here though. It just relies on the base AI to flank. Which is the entire point of the mission. To introduce the concept that two fast ships can flank a slower, more powerful ship, and one can back off and vent while the enemy ship is busy with the other one. This is a fundamental concept that would potentially get lost in a large fleet furball. The mission also starts with the ships completely fit and usable. You can refit them if you want, to experiment or whatever, but it's totally optional and not expected. In fact, I'd be willing to bet most players would just hit the big PLAY MISSION button instead of the reset and refit buttons first when put on that screen.
The second mission introduces the benefit of having a strong but slow anchor ship (in this case the Venture) which your Hammerhead can retreat to or behind as a safe place to vent, and also teaches the importance of staying together and not venturing off alone in a faster ship. Again, only 2 ships, so no need for a fleet AI. It also introduces capture points for the first time (prior mission had none, this has only 2 to fight over).
The third mission adds more ships now (instead of 2, now you've got 6), but keeps the primary ship the same as last mission, so you don't need to learn anything new about your own ship - just learning to command the new ship type, carriers with bombers, as well as how to take out a much bigger ship through superior maneuver. It also shows the importance of the placement of your bombers relative to the target. It also kind of shows how important it is to pick off frigates first (and that Piranha bombers work against Dominators, not so much Tempests). At this point you might say, a fleet AI could be handy, while you pilot the Hammerhead, but that was kinda last mission. At this point, it should be about learning how positioning on the macro level affects a fight on the micro level.
The fourth mission introduces completely new ship types, and a new type of battle - a retreat battle. It show cases a couple different mobility systems, in a relatively low stress environment where you're just trying to chase things, which is another important concept. Chasing can also pull you out of position as well to catch other ships.
Note to Alex: Should 4th mission talk about a fleet wide search and destroy order (which is not a thing) but instead about a full assault? Also, this would be a great mission to mention deploying frigates on the left or right side with multiple clicks.
Anyways, I could keep going down the list, but I feel the missions currently are hand crafted encounters designed to teach the player core combat concepts and make them better at the combat portion of the game, irregardless of whatever bonuses or over deployments they might be able to do in the campaign. If you can pull off every single mission, you will have no problems with the combat portion of the game. Like if you can beat the Last Hurrah without refitting, 175 DP vs 236 DP, that should mean you're fine in almost any NPC faction fight once you get to that point. And it lets you try each of the lessons as many times as you like without any pressure until you can exploit the thing it's trying to teach you.