Okay I was going through and purging some planets, starting with my tiny Average Barren planets. Seeing one owned by an enemy I was hoping to find a secret stash of Storage artifacts.....instead I found these.





As these pictures are LIKELY NOT to work, let me paint you a picture.

These images show a level 3 having colonyzed a TINY BARREN WITH ABUNDANT Research. Now to me, Abundant sounds pretty good. BUT Since I know that Abundant is crap in GL, I know to stay away. My picture gets better......He uses his Aegis Shield thing you get in the beginning of the game. Yeah.......

I feel bad for this noob who is likely NOT playing anymore. I would suggest that beginners are given a list of planets. Maybe even a range of resource levels. With a Scale of bad at the left or bottom and good at the right or top. I don't have any clue to how this would be implemented......so for all of you smart people out there, figure this out! (^_^). I am going back to purging the planet.

the gyazo.com URLs you're using for your images aren't images, but actual html pages... they don't show properly if you use the IMG link... use the URL link instead

http://gyazo.com/73af998af583cf76f37cf71ae27814c9
http://gyazo.com/883b76f44abf0e9a5a5d4613dff3a9fb

seems gyazo doesn't like people linking directly to the images... it bypasses their advertisements so they redirect instead

as for the actual issue at hand.... a low lvl player is probably only going to have about 10-15 scanned planets to choose from (if that many) before he colonizes his first... (which in my opinion he should actually start with something like a large rich/rich/rich... or at least an average size average/average/average... already colonized)

and people should be able to infer from the words sparse, average, abundant, rich, which one is better than the other... i would think that'd be around at least a 5th grader's skill level...


also..... when i first started out... most of my first planets located were between sparse and abundant... except for a few rich that were held by lvl 50-500's that obviously a lvl 1 in any game wouldn't dream of touching

the problem with scale is that....
there is average, then there is scarse. so before a player ever sees rich, it makes perfect sense that abundant appears to be the cap, as there is a tier(or rather 3) below average and also a tier above.... in fact, even if a noob sees a rich or 2, they might believe it to be uber duper rare or something by this logic...
it's not a matter of "grading scale of 5" but rather the fact that "average" is REALLY badly placed.

planet size is a bit better in this aspect, there is "tiny" to pad the existence for massive. So if a player gets either, they would probably either go for the massive directly or infer from the tiny the existence of massive.

seriously thou... i doubt a newb would turn down a very large abundant or something to that effect, and in the long run, that's pretty sad actully.

I think that if the lil bot in the beginning of the game gave more useful information it would be quite helpful. It mainly points out information you can gain by just mousing over something and proves to be little help.

"Focus on decks while your rank points, and try to use as little cargo as possible as you will get unlimited cargo by rank 100."
"You get 1 planet every 4 ranks, there are a lot of planets in the game sometimes holding out for a good one will help you in the long run. Average should not be your average production or size."
"Badges are a pain to get the higher you climb in rank because of traps, take advantage of the fact no one starting has traps to burn and pvp, hack and raid as much as you can"
"Keep 4 relays on until your about to rank up, then take them off and install 3 reactors for max energy on a rank up."

You get the idea, I think flat tips like these would be better than "This is your energy bar, you may note it says ENERGY. The more energy you have the more actions you can take."

maybe there should be beginner legions that all new players are automatically dropped into... and those beginner legions are run by volunteer galaxy guides,... players that wish to help the lil people...

the beginners really need direction from a personal experience perspective.... a tutorial can only help out so much, and then it's useless beyond that...


Restriction on proposed beginner legion: Max base level = 1, volunteer galaxy guides get appointed or recruited by Dan and cannot receive anything from the newbies, but can give them (limited) artis and minerals

some newbies would have trouble even figuring out the fact that they are in a legion...
big red warning signs in some places is probably best idea... such as trying to colonize anything below a 100 space*best-availability rating planet would pop a "this is not really a good planet, please check here *some link* for more info and a guide" or something like that would be nice.

Beginner legions sound like a good idea but there would have to be a good incentive for experienced players to have to be constantly repeating themselves to players who will probably go inactive in a week anyway.

+1 to the OP.

This thread needs to be elaborated into a full fledged suggestion for a new and better tutorial.

What?

A good tutorial is important. GL has a pretty steep learning curve. I remember puting rank points into scientists and engineers when I started. Didn't know how important deck space was.

Some games have objectives or goals which help a player to learn the game. For example, let's say there was a mission which said put 25 rank points into ship and get one free planet with decent resources to start the new players off.

Alternatively GP could be the reward and there'd be no GP when you start the game.

1. You don't get unlimited cargo by rank 100 ... you get more cargo as your artifact production climbs, but no idea where you're getting unlimited
2. Eh, a decent tip, but kind of self-explanatory, if people want to hold out for better they will
3. True, but not always, plenty of newer players grab the concept quickly and trap up, as for doing as much as you can, just sort of screams "Be a jackass to everyone!"
4. Again, sort of self-explanatory ...

You might as well tell people "Click this mission x amount of times. Then, click this mission x amount of times. Now, add your points to x stat. Now, click this mission to get a boost into next level. Now, click this mission x amount of times." ... this tips are useful, but you can't put every single good tip at the beginning, people would get overwhelmed and have a lower probability of becoming interested from the get-go as opposed to them finding things out on their own.