Helper tools

[berten]

Over the 10 (wtf: i shld quit) years i played pa I also tried several other games out of boredom, intrest, ... .

The same problem always occured. You build a load of ships / constructions /... and still the moment you get attacked, or even attack yourself you get bashed into pieces by the more experienced players because in heavens earth you had no idea you only build stuff that could harm certain other things, and be killed by entire different ones.

Long story short: Noobs need help.

Problem: Planetarion provides 0.

Some things that just popped into my head while browsing through some other threads.

In game helper forum:

The current forums are not integrated into the game. Many new guys don't ever end up here, let alone they'll start looking for (mostly outdated ) information or bother with registering a forum account.

Why not integrate a helper forum into the game where experienced players can suggest stuff to new players. If eg a newbie gets incs, he should be encouraged ingame to ask what to do with them / how to handle it. A few attacks/defences later he'll know what to do next time.

We could even integrate a helper team into this. I'm sure people will be bored in between ticks and will want to invest some time into these new players. (I imagine this could be a good fishing ground for 'training alliances').

Manual update:
Noobs don't care about difficult forumae etc, give them the long story and help them get trough the choices they have to make

Helper tips:
Help them trough the steps of the game during their first few h ticks.
Don't just say that incomming hostile fleets have showed up. Give them a heads up of what the dangers of that fleet are, what the possible defence is, ....

Integrate Bcalc:

At this moment the battlecalc link is situated at the bottom left corner of the menu. Hell, if i were starting to play a new game, i wouldn't search for a bcalc (I'd not even know it is there), and certainly wouldn't think that hidden between manual/support/stats/portal I could find the most important tool in planetarion.

Why not put up bcalc links next to incomming? Why not even give them a heads up and fill some stuff in for them?

Show the different incomming more clearly
Make it clear for newbies that different eta's mean different battles. Atm your overview just show a kazillion amount of waves. Make the UI clearer and define the different battles that will take place.

[Mzyxptlk]

Yes.

[t3k]

[GReaper]

It's pretty obvious - the manual is insufficient. You can't just dump a wall of text on players and expect them to enjoy it.

The game should guide new players, quests were a half arsed attempt at this. Don't expect new players to enjoy the game until the entire new player experience is gone over thoroughly.