More help for new players, i am all for that. Getting into this game requires some dedication. And plenty of people i persuaded to try the game still struggled with some stuff, despite my trying to give as much help and info as i could... so one can just guess how things would be for somebody coming into the game with neither such support nor prior knowledge.
The game is known to have a bad retention rate of new players, any way of improving this is good.
That being said, i don't think that they should be guided to engineering. Engineering way too often is a crutch. And after that, it's a terrible case of power creep. Also, what others said is true: you don't need any engineering to be successful.
I mean, at the time when the game still gave us new ships (how many years since the last one?), i always picked them up. Gave them equipment, but did not do any engineering. I rather directly went to a HAZRes site and took on a number of enemies of all sizes and competence levels. I made sure that a number of elite NPCs in bigger ships were among that. That told me if i actually wanted to invest the time to engineer the ship, or just put it into the garage for the collection.
I always was able to defeat even Elite Anacondas and not once did i loose any of the non-engineered ships. Which tells me that non-engineered ships are "good enough". Anything beyond that it god-moding your ships. (Mind you, over the years i did that to many ships... because the materials were there anyway... but it's not essential. )
And to keep up with my reputation: yes, i also aways support the idea of nerfing engineers. Doing so would have many advantages. In the aspect of the given topic: that the gap between the new player and higher content would be smaller, making the game more accessible to them. With engineering being less powerful, it would be less of the rat-race is currently is and more of an optional path of improving your ships at your own pace, making it a much more welcoming and enjoyable experience.
I remember the majority of my rebuys being in the first couple of months of play. Stay with small ships as they're more forgiving to learn in and expect things to go wrong. Often. It's just that sort of game.
Semi-true. Small ships are actually very unforgiving if you make mistakes. I have lost a number of Eagles when i was new to the game and took on enemies of any size and number with it. But where you are right: the rebuy is so little, you can afford to loose a few dozen of them without it really hurting you.
And in the end, being so vulnerable really teaches you defensive flying and how to survive in bad situations. All in all, people who learned in the small ships generally tend to be good pilots.
Mind you, there also are people around who learned to be great pilots while only flying big ships... but when you fly around in a big ship, good piloting is something you choose to learn. If you go to combat in a small ship, the ship forces you to learn. And after years in a fully engineered medium ship, i think i am a rather bad pilot by now. My ship is so tough, i don't really need to care much for defensive flying, making me quite lazy.
So really, you can become a good pilot in any ship, but small ones force you to learn, at a rather low rebuy price. So just like you, i advise people to go learn combat in those. But i also know that very few people do so by now, as credits come in so fast and bigger ships are quickly accessible.
