Let's Idiot Proof StarMade

[Mango888]

I D I O T PROOF
If there's such a learning curve let's get rid of it. You should be rewarded in game with credits for going through tutorials which will give you the resources for your own station or mistakes. Put factories on all space stations. Put rail docks on all space stations. Put big defense turrets on all space stations. Give a new player a massive miner. The fun starts in starmade survival when you have a big factory, big miner, and big ambition to make massive ships and stations. When you know how to harness the really high resources in starmade you don't fear pvp and losing ships isn't the end of the world. My own forum posted experience reflects this. I spent 8 hours as a beginner mining for a ship anyone could make in 20 minutes and I lost it in 5 seconds to custom pirates. I could have rage quit and moved on to different game. Doing well in survival will make you want to improve your designs so you will want to learn more by default.

 

[NaStral]

Many servers, including my own do give a leg up to new player in various ways such as our use of bars as a server currency with special vending machines handling the transactions. Every player starts with two, which can be used to purchase, among other things a pretty decent miner.Players also have the option of doing instanced quests in which they can earn more bars for purchasing additional stuff later. A cheap but complete starter station wouldn't be a bad idea either.

A lot of folks would argue that the climb up is in integral part of the learning experience, though I can also see when that becomes frustrating especially after starting again for the umpteenth time. There's quite a few players out there that may have done the full song and dance of Starmade but just want to say fight for a faction rather than mine. Some people love mining and doing the whole factory thing. Good factions can support all these kind of players and get them to work together, though starting out generally everyone's doing everything until they get established. In some ways the number of non mining pilots a faction can support without excess strain on their logistics people can be a sort of measure of success. There are also players that don't posses good enough hardware to effectively deal with combat, so many of those end up doing more support while controlling fleets to help their allies.

I do want to explore more things to allow a player to quickly bounce back from loss so they'll be a bit bolder in their actions but I don't want to undermine and take the wind out of the sails of people who are capable and manage to do everything they set their mind to without assistance.

 

[JinM]

This suggestion was not made in particular. Making stations for beginner friendliniess seems not to be a top priority right now. I would like to as Criss how he thinks about the idea of beginner friendly stations that are also outfitted with accessible factories, and small free miners that are not factionised but docked to it. The trading guild would be perfectly fitting the role of having such a public first aid thing going on. Did you consider putting some free factories and maybe even miners in one or two of the stations you plan to build for the factions?

For the next 6 months, this effort has to come from the player base. The dev team might not be willing to invest their time into making new tutorials, and new stations will also take some time, as they are busy with other parts of Starmade.

Here is a fitting comment of Duke for better insight. The linked topic of mine is one of the numerous, that allready asked for more accessiblity for the game.

We have begun early drafts of a new tutorial system; we also document troubles new players have when first starting (by watching streamers). We've had other professional game designers list criticisms with our early game in the past, so we have a bit of material to work with.

Right now, our priority is on pushing feature development forward so we can reach beta (our current development focus is on cleanup). This would all be part of polish, which we'll heavily work on throughout beta as well as bugfixing. We'll likely implement a new tutorial system before then, some of our new mechanics and proposals will also help with this.

For your paricular suggestion Mango, I would say that we could make a thread with nice starter stations, and starter miners for beginners. The community content uploads could easily be linked. A level one starter station could have an allready setup factory line for hull or something, and some teaching displays. A level one miner could allready have a good salvage-cannon setup and jump drives. The linked stations and miners should be very small, so they can be easily spawned after like 20 minutes of mining. Bigger stations and miners are secondary, and are not usefull, if the small stations and miners are not given.

Another idea would be, to simply build those starter stations colaborative with the community.

 

[Mango888]

I give out my miner and I'm no server admin. I guess I might as well develop a beginner station and give it out so I can help people move on from protected spawn. I know everything will continue to move in slow motion and anything that happens today will come from the community alone and from devs in the far future. I'm here for PVP but the power update has drained the community so while we're in this drought I will continue to give support to beginners.

 

[jayman38]

I wish the tutorial station worked. I bet that would have been a fun introduction to the game. (When I played with it, the important NPCs fell out the bottom, due to gravity, before the station had "materialized.")

Maybe the tutorial station can be released without gravity enabled? I would have enjoyed looking through how it introduced players to the game.

 

[NaStral]

The only way right now to get npcs to stay put is to make them sit down. I've been thinking of making a toutorial/playthrough video for LvD to show a solid start and highlight server features.

 

[Criss]

the idea of beginner friendly stations that are also outfitted with accessible factories, and small free miners that are not factionised but docked to it. The trading guild would be perfectly fitting the role of having such a public first aid thing going on. Did you consider putting some free factories and maybe even miners in one or two of the stations you plan to build for the factions?

I'm not sure we could spawn in a free ship for every new player that joins a server. I think that might mess things up a bit. What I do want to do is setup a sequence of events during your first few hours where you can learn the game, discover the 3 main factions, and possibly earn a starter ship at the end of this experience. I've already put this to the rest of the team but I do not know if it will happen.

 

[Mango888]

A full blue print reward then. This starter blue print with items included could be set by the server admin.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

This suggestion and ...

I'm not sure we could spawn in a free ship for every new player that joins a server. I think that might mess things up a bit. What I do want to do is setup a sequence of events during your first few hours where you can learn the game, discover the 3 main factions, and possibly earn a starter ship at the end of this experience. I've already put this to the rest of the team but I do not know if it will happen.

... all reminded me of my suggestion for Simplify Startup For New Players
And it also prompted me to put this together.
Starter Play for Starmade Single Play and Multi-Player

 

[Calhoun]

Pizza is a necessity, GTFO.

The proper suggestion is also terrible. Why would you want to remove something that gives the game depth? Why would you want to trivialise building even more?
As the game sits now, you start with power blocks, thrusters, etc. It takes about two seconds to work out how they work. It takes a bit longer to work out how to make them work better, which is a good thing not a bad one.