On 3/17/07, Karthik Arumugham <karthik at karthik.com> wrote: > > I propose the following, based off RadoS' idea of extra information > for new players: > > Newbies get a downgraded ship. No matter what ship type they choose, > they end up in a CA. This CA will have det own disabled, and if you > are > 2/3 CA phaser distance from the nearest enemy, your torps will > linearly go down in speed to a minimum of 67% until you reach 4/3 of > CA distance from an enemy ship, at which point they will not slow > further. Some good ideas. How would this newbie mode be enabled though? I've seen clue-in-hiding login with newbenice and playnetrek.org. Perhaps the login screen could have this as an extra option? Forcing them into the same login would not be good since newbies tend to want their own names. Would this be client independent? I think the best way to attract newbies is on significant client development but I know others disagree. While we're giving extra info to newbies I propose we pop up a window explaining how to send messages to the different boards and what is the enemy (how often we've seen newbies shooting at their own teammates), how to move (this is very common to see newbies just sitting there motionless firing), and how to fire weapons. These seem to be the most common newbies problems. If you don't want the message coming up in the client then perhaps have a link on the login screen (i suspect most newbies don't bother reading the motd) to a webpage explaining this all (ideally with nice screens shots). Zach