Just created the below post in the suggestions forum, wanted to put it here as well so that us Gsf'ers can discuss / debate on additional improvements for the tutorial. A lot of you in this forum have great ideas and hopefully with a little brainstorming we can fix the mess that is the GSF tutorial:

Original Post in suggestions forum - please support there and debate here

The GSF tutorial IMO (and others) is very poor and does not prepare pilots for PvP adequately.

The dev's have stated that "drones" or moving targets (which is the preffered method) are not viable due to development time / resources.

I postulate simpler, much easier to implement solution that would seriously up the value of the GSF tutorial:

Flying Rings and Shooting Orbs: Example of rings from super man

Rings: A set of large rings that will function as a course that pilots have to fly through. (rings disappear after pilots flies through them)

Orbs: Destroy-able orbs that weave their way through the rings, simulating the path a target ship making evasive maneuvers would make.

Additional Description:

Rings spacing should vary so that pilots have to increase/decrease throttle in order to navigate them successfully.

Ring course should take pilots around objects like nodes and asteroids to simulate defensive flying / LOS.

Rings and orbs should "track" meaning that at the end of the match you get a percentage for flying and accuracy.

For ease of development, re-tooled mines could be used as the orbs. They would need to have armor reduced so they are destroyed in 1 hit.

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Defensive Flying / Lock Break

Similar to the above tutorial could be a "Defensive" tutorial where the object is not to fly through the rings and shoot orbs, but to fly through the rings and avoid missile locks

Missiles could be fired from drones, placed at intervals along the course. Alternately the missiles could start locking at intervals around the course without a drone.

Pilots would learn how to break missile locks with components, as well as with LOS. (guided by messages in game as to which is appropriate)

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Either part of the above tutorials or as its own stand alone:

Abilities / Components / Power Management:

A small note could pop up in the beginning describing power settings, and how to use them. Pop ups could be generated on certain power related events, explaining why a pilot should switch to another setting (Boosting to node, out of weapon power, after taking damage / in the clear to regen shields etc)

Pilots should be guided through in game messages when to click a component ability. A small description should pop up outlining the ability then the pilot should be free to use it in an appropriate situation (Ie offensive defensive etc)

During the tutorial it would be helpful if pilots could use different component abilities, that way they can see/feel the differences between them and start to understand their uses.

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Conclusion:

Current tutorial really is bad, and drives players away from the game (and subsequently their money as well)

With a re-thinking of the tutorial and some of the above additions (especially the rings / orbs and the defensive tutorial) people would be MUCH more prepared for combat. I wouldn't have to see things like new players eating missile after missile without even attempting a missile break or defensive maneuver, then coming to the forums and crying about how the game is broken.

Edit: Crowd-sourced = community driven, didn't want people to get confused and I think I was promoting crowd-funding etc just wanted to probe the community for additional / better suggestions.

New Players

Fighter/scout training: Anyone remember the tunnels from TIE Fighter? Something like that would be nice for teaching killing stationary things. It wouldn't be too hard to make a bomber AI which flies through cover to show you how to get a missile lock under those kinds of conditions, though it would get a bit predictable, and a later one which dropped mines as it flew. To be real, you'd also need one which knows how to hide in a crack. The type 3 bomber would also get this mission, because it's more striker than bomber. The script would include some way-off-center shots which a newbie would likely miss because of tracking penalty.

Gunship training: Things which fly around 10-15km out through waypoints. Add even a simple AI for a scout which tries to rush you, and circle back around if it survived and failed to kill you the first time. The sim would detect if that happened, and tell you: careful, it's not done with you yet! You have to either lead it into a convenient nearby minefield, or kill it. All the AI would have to do is fly toward you, fire when it got in maximum/optimum range, and steer toward you if you let it fly through/past you. Early difficulties would be stock Nova with quick charge, later ones would be a quads-and-pods or BLC/cluster scout like everyone's afraid of.

Bomber training: Hmm. That would be a little harder to code. OF course, it could always teach the latest "pro" bomber move by checking to see if you managed to fly your bomber into one of those tiny cracks, point it outward, and drop mines/drones, and see how long you lasted as stuff flew by (couple of free shots!), "figured out what you were doing", and came back to kill you. This could also include something which tries to chase you through the tunnels obstacle course, and you'd have to learn about mine and drone placement because the AI would target your mines as the mission progressed. Oh, and stationary targets along the way, because bombers can shoot things too.

 

You would access each training mission by selecting the ship you wanted to train, and click the tutorial button, and a correct voice actor would tell you what was going on. Pricey version: your copilot. Cheaper version:The admirals. Destitute version: Anyone who can manage a pub/imp accent. This would also give a newbie a limited test-new-builds battlefield.

Written here first.

Not sure if trolling or not......

If so bugger off please if not:

Dev's have stated they do not want to spend the time / resources to develop AI or moving targets for tutorials. This is basically the whole reason I would choose to put this post up in the first place, there is a disconnect between what people want for a tutorial and what they will provide.

mine is an attempt to provide an easier solution that does not require AI, new voice recordings etc but still adds value teaching people things like basic offensive and defensive flying as well as component use / missile breaks etc. Per ship tutorials would really be preferred but IMO it will never happen.

I also put my suggestion into the curated thread, as it stands though tutorial is largely ignored there with debates on game mechanics and tuning going on. Tutorial revamp deserves its own thread, and im keeping mine bumped both here and in the suggestion thread in the hope that a dev will catch a glance.

Your suggestion is wholly different from mine, not a bad one mind you. Just one that the dev's would likely ignore due to massive development time / cost.

Written here first.

No, this looks like a fresh suggestion. Unless you mean to talk about the vague idea of "nice if we had a better tutorial", which showed up like a year ago, or your specific suggestion with an AI, which is not really what this is about.

On the overall idea, I don't think we'd see the crowd-sourcing concept be something that Bioware can hook into. With parent company EA having too much to lose in the event of a bag legal tide, and the requirement to fund lawyers for a LOT of hours to even look into it, the entire idea will be unpalatable until enough large companies start doing it- which could easily not happen.

Specifically, the ideas listed here are easily top tier. They are obviously chosen to be economical and simple, best bang-for-buck.

The only one I don't like is "when the players should be swapping power settings". I think something that shows some general ideas is good, but there's a lot of depth to those, especially with the "recently consumed" rates. Showing them how is good though.

in the crowd sourcing term I only meant it in the most basic sense: that of community driven suggestions to better the tutorial. Was hoping someone had some easy kickass addition I couldn't think of heh.

Crow-sourcing has become a much deeper thing since I first started using the word, ill have to fix that in the dictionary part of my brain lol.

edit* and on the power settings thing your right, thats high level stuff thats learned. Would have to be careful not to mislead people as to a good use for a power setting.