The need to have Planets accessible to new players is understandable. It'd be great to constantly have new players joining and developing the love for the game that we all have.
I'm wondering though if a different approach might be better. Instead of having Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced rule sets, what if there was a Beginner race instead?
When learning anything it's all the exceptions to the rules that makes it challenging. The more exceptions there are the harder it is. So if there was a Beginner race that had no exceptions, like no different taxing, no different mining, no cloaking, no special missions, it was just a pure vanilla race.
The advantages would be numerous. The race would be simpler to play, but the economy would be the same, so getting good at setting up an economy with the Beginner race would also make one good at setting up an economy with any race.
Teaching would be easier for example in MvM games since every new player is playing the same race. It would be possible to write a Beginner guide that was very specific, including exactly what ship to build and in exactly what order. As it is now a Beginner guide has to deal with all the exceptions based on the various races that might be played.
The coding would be simpler. Instead of having to deal with all the possible bugs and special situations, like building fighters with MCs instead of supplies, and no damage repair, and no alchemy and such, there would just be a new easy-to-play race that followed all the normal rules.
A lot of simplification could come from a very simple and straightforward ship list. If you don't want minelaying then don't include any minelaying ships, just have it be a carrier race. If you don't want alchemy, then don't include any Merlins or Neutronic Refineries. The rest of the simplification could come from Beginner game settings, like using PLS and having fuel and mineral levels be set very high. Fuel's not an issue if there's tons of it laying around on the surface of every planet.
I think it would be much easier to code for a new race and ship list, than it would be to code for different rule sets, since it's just adding a module to an existing base rather than going through all the code and adding provisions for each rule set.
It would also avoid the strange problems with the Levels where the Pirates and Crystals can't really be played properly under the Beginner rules.
In all I believe having a Beginner race would make the game approachable to new players while at the same time getting them prepared to play more advanced races. |
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