Quote:
Originally Posted by Appocomaster
By the way, Cin and I are very interested in much, much, much more concrete ideas in manual / layout suggestions for making the game more playable.
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Right.
Step the very first: When you click a race on the signup screen it needs to tell you something about that race. This needs to be straightforward and not filled with waffle (put the sci-fi junk in the manual)
For example, Terran:
Terrans have heavily armoured ships and can construct new buildings very fast. Their ability to research new technologies is average and their ability to perform covert-operations is weak. They also receive a moderate salvage bonus from destroyed ships during battles.
(No new player cares about the universe trade tax, seriously. They also don't care about precise statistics because they're not the guys who weigh things up with a calculator before deciding what to do.)
This needs to be on the signup page because it's the very first thing you see when you decide you want to play and it has a massive impact on your round.
Step the next in line:
1) Welcome to your planet. This is your base of operations and improving this planet is the point of the game.
2) To improve your planet you need to do 4 things. Research new technologies, construct new buildings, produce new ships using these two and then capture asteroids so you can build even more ships.
3) These things take time, you have start-up bonuses to help you. Go look at "the quests" to find out what order to best do them in (make the quests slightly more informative).
4) Your best advantage is your galaxy. Galaxies communicate via IRC, mail your galaxy mates to find out how to use this simple program. They will be able to give you advice on how best to build your planet. In the meanwhile click on the com-unit
These are the four steps that get people from "wtf is this incomprehensible shit" to where the game is actually played. If they don't like it fair enough but you have to at least get them there.
These need to be quick to read, easy to understand bullet points about how play PA. Even MrLobster's expansion is too long in my opinion. One basic link after/during each point is enough (so that people can find out more if they're interested in doing it). You should be almost "forced" to read it all in your first glance so you get that basic understand concerning how the game is played. This should be the very first page of the manual.
As an aside the manual is total gibberish. The covert-ops page is hysterical. You expect a new player to load that and read it? Jesus ****ing christ it's 1300 words and a bunch of formulae. Yes the details need to be there. No they should not be the first thing a new player reads. My advice would be to have a basic (again) quick to read, easy to understand manual and at the bottom of each page have a "do you want to know more" link which contains all the advanced stuff. Even the menu is miles too long. Forty options with almost no indication as to what's more important to read? Seriously?
As a secondary aside the production page, the research page and the construction page should all come with an advice "what should i produce/research/build" thing at the top of it.
Step the one that comes after the one before:
So you've used your start-up bonuses and you want to know what to do next? First of all some bad news for you, "protection" means you'll need to log back in tomorrow. Start <therightresearch> and queue <thenextone>, build a couple of new constructions and see you tomorrow!
[seriously pateam just delete protection okay, what on earth is it there for?]
So it's now tomorrow and you want to know what do. Well planetarion is about ships. Hundreds upon thousands, and even up to the millions, of ships that you build using the resources you get from your planet and its asteroids. The more ships you have the higher your value and the bigger the planets you can attack. All of your ships do different things so have a look here <hyperlink to individual race ship stats page> and find out what your ships do.
The hyperlinked ship stats page should look something like this:
Harpy: This is a defensive fighter class ship that targets other fighters. (Click on it to find out more, giving you a link to what the current ship stats page says. If the ship is good at doing different things it should tell you this as well).
Pegasus: This is an ATTACKING HIGHLIGHT ATTACKING USE THIS SHIP TO ATTACK ship that you use with your <nameofrelevantpod> to attack and roid other planets. This attack fleet is good at roiding <nameofrelevantrace>.
Get yourself some factories and use your resources to build yourself some ships and think about attacking someone to gain some asteroids!
Step the ****ing last:
So you've got some asteroids and you've built yourself some ships to get more asteroids and we hope you've remember to keep researching new technologies and construct more buildings! Where to next you ask? Well, the best bit of Planetarion is your ability to talk with the others in your galaxy, and elsewhere, and work together to improve your planets. Your galaxy mates may already have mailed you to say hi. Click into the com-unit say hello back and join the galaxy.
Welcome to Planetarion
That's it. Seriously. That's it. Anything else is too long and too boring for someone to actually read through. There are ways to improve it. For example the stuff you should do once protection finishes should only pop up once you've finished protection. The so you've landed an attack stuff should only pop up after you've landed an attack.
The overview should be ****ing deleted and replaced with something relevant to new players (trust me, nobody else reads it anyways) like "INITIATE UP TO 300 ROIDS BUT IT'S NOT ADVISABLE TO GO FURTHER THAN THIS" or "THE TECHNOLOGIES THAT ARE MOST IMPORTANT ARE THE SHIP BUILDING ONES" etc.
The news and mail buttons need to be much more prominent. Like staring you in your face and in colour prominent. The basic screen also looks like shit. Red, blue and black? Make most of it all one plain as shit colour and then make the important stuff really noticeable.
The quest system is in far too prominent a place, you should be hyperlinking people to it regardless. Why do we even have to click start on it anyways? They may ignore it. Make it so that once you do things your news entry telling you you did some quest pops up, maybe then they'll be interested in it and go look for it.
Fleet info should be at the bottom of the screen, below ships. New players need to read about construction and research and if they're not constructing or researching something it needs to be telling them this is in big, bright shiny lights with bells on.
I'd continue but I'm getting bored now.