Written by Vexxial (he is non-subbed):

 

In this day and age, the sight of a two shipper should be rare one indeed. With an introductory quest that rewards 5000 fleet requisition upon completion, folks out there should be working with at least 3 ships following their first game. While there are certain circumstances that may prevent this (having taken the quest and misused the requisition previously, having played the old intro quest, or not yet having reached level 10) we still see an alarming amount of players joining games with only two ships on their bar that goes beyond these circumstances and may be simple ignorance of the mechanics. Not only does this give them a lack of flexibility, but the two ships that are given are arguably the least well-equipped to support a team in either deathmatch OR domination game modes, and the current meta has these ships only used in very specific situational builds. I hope most of us who have been around the proverbial GSF block a few times can see the issue that this presents to getting more players interested in the game. You may be wondering "What can I do to help?" or some of the more negative of us may be saying "How is another stupid post on the forums supposed to help new players that don't read the forums?" and to you both I propose the idea of a basic text-tutorial. Whenever we enter a match with two-shippers on our team (on on the other team as well if in a wargame) we should copy from this thread, and paste (ctrl+v) a pre-written, community-approved basic tutorial into the ops or general chat prior to a match, explaining to newer players how and where to get the mission, how to spend the req (NOT on rapid fire lasers), and possibly welcoming them to the game as well. Hopefully this will allow for a better atmosphere and some guidance for new players, which the current in-game tutorial SORELY lacks, and ultimately lead to a more active GSF population across all servers.

 

example "Welcome to GSF! To the new players out there, grab the intro mission from the PvP section of the fleet after this game. You will earn the req to buy a new ship of your choosing. I recommend the "____" for a new player to get started with."

 

I am not sure if this example is too long or short, and I am not sure what ship to recommend, but I believe that making this information available to the community, straight from the mouths of some of the vets, will go a long way.

I personally think we should be recommending players to use the 5000 fleet to buy a Quarrel and Rampart since they are only 2500 each. The other option would be to recommend them to buy a Warcarrier since that is a very useful ship for both deathmatch and domination and is probably the easiest ship to play. Edited March 13, 2015 by RickDagles

I think Type 1 Gunship and Type 1 Bomber is the only sane recommendation. It's not the only sane course of action, but as a general recommendation, nothing else will help most players to the same degree.

 

Type 2 Bomber and Type 2 Scout are both also very solid first ship choices, but the fact that the type 1 ships cost half of the type 2 and type 3 ships...

 

Anyway, there should be almost zero two shippers. It's shocking how many appear. I like the copypasta idea.

Vexx wants everyone to know that the character limit is 275 for one message.

This is good advice.

Will there be any room for the advice? It takes me 300 characters just to properly tell foodships to stop flying into enemy bombers, upgrading their rapid fire lasers, and that spacebar is boost.

 

With only 275 characters, we need either a text compression algorithm, or a poet to compress the data on the spiritual level.

I actually know a published poet, but I don't think that is what is needed here. Nor do I think the proposed message will help those it is targeted at. You could hand these people a mastered T1 gs and they would fly straight at the nearest enemy continuously firing their blasters from 20k away,

 

I do think Vexxial's message is very solid advice for the hapless 2-shipper, but I think the most important message to deliver is that there is a GSF chat channel on the server, and they should join it, introduce themselves, and ask lots of questions. Getting them in the chat channels (and having an active presence in the chat channels) is, I think, a better way to elevate the uninitiated into the neighborhood of competency.

 

New pilots, for advice on tactics and ship builds, use /cjoin GSF after the match to chat with veterans who want to help you win!

 

(or something)

 

I've had success in the past approaching people individually after matches, especially if they say something in ops chat like 'I dont know what I'm doing' or 'how does ______ work', showing they care enough to seek help.

 

If there was a way for me to teach every 2-shipper rudimentary GSF skills, I'd run a class daily, just so they wouldn't keep filling up my teams.

 

- Despon

This would be a whole lot easier if links to forum topics in chat were clickable. Not other sites, obviously, but definitely this one.

When have you ever said something in under 275 characters Verain

 

Here's what we're thinking so far:

Welcome to GSF! New players, please grab the intro mission from the PvP terminal on the fleet after this game. You will earn the fleet req to buy both the Rampart bomber and the Quarrel gunship. Also type /cjoin GSF into your chat box to join the gsf chat channel.

 

What do you guys think?

That's a good message. The only addendum is: if you're posting it on POT5, the GSF chat channel is for some reason called Pilot ... just a note to anyone who happens to go there. I'm not aware of any other servers that use a different channel, but they may exist.

 

I'll try using that in-game from now on when there are 2-shippers about.

 

- Despon

Depends on the server. The GSF chat channels on the Ebon Hawk seem pretty active. The ones on the Shadowlands... not so much. In that case, I would just tell them to take a look at the GSF forum.