Had reasonable success with the following approach recently although I did introduce one player who took to it like a duck to water and now has almost as many hours sunk into it as me. Agree it's very much a love / hate niche game despite people liking space sims like the X series, NMS and others.
------
Step 1: Ask them for a 3-6 hour commitment of time for the tutoring session. Get this up front or one of you is going to get annoyed when they get bored, frustrated or have to go do something else they didn't tell you about and similarly, you're going to get annoyed at them wasting your time on an incomplete job.
Step 2: Once you have their commitment, head out to your favourite Void Opal mining spot and get started without them while they poke around in the settings to get their controls set up and PRIORITY 1 - "Deploy Hardpoints on Firing" must, MUST be turned OFF! (FDev, this oversight is getting people killed!)
Step 3: Let them practice docking in the tutorials if they can / want to while you arrange to bring them into your friends list / Squadron so they can log into your Private Group then bring them into a Multicrew Session so you can use the in-game voice comms if they can't / won't use Discord / Team Speak etc.
Step 4: If you haven't already, get them to use the headlook / vanity cam to look around YOUR ship and see how HUGE it is (I use a T-10 for mining) so they get a sense of scale compared to the newbwinder when they log back to it later and make use of the disposable fighters so they don't mess with your pips.
Step 5: One of the best, AWARD WINNING aspects of this game is the audio so, send them right up close to the asteroid you've just set charges on, and BLOW THEM UP! Yes, lol, all very funny right? Well, kinda, but it gives you an opportunity to explain rebuy and why they don't do that in their own ships.
Step 6: Let them fly around a bit harder in the newly printed fighter now they know it doesn't matter if they kill it and get an improved grip on the controls, making adjustments in the settings where necessary and flying along through the asteroid field with you so they get a tutorial on the highest paying game activity.
Step 7: See if they can return the fighter to your ship the right way up (not a typo, lol) and head back to a station where you can sell the junk yields while they're still in MC to collect an easy cash boost then send them back to their own ship. Use inara.cz to find a station NEAR THEM with good VO / LTD prices.
Step 8: Use EDDB.io to find a station NEAR THEM that has a Hauler, low end Collector Limpet and plenty of cargo bays for sale and get them to buy and equip one with the MC cash they just made while keeping the loanwinder for practicing in later so they don't have to be concerned about rebuy.
Step 9: Take the opportunity to walk them through Outfitting and module Class differences while you're both still docked then head over to where they are with your mining yields (I switch from the Type 10 to a heavily armoured Python to deliver mining yields to low-sec systems with significantly better prices)
Step 10: Bring them outside the local no fire zone and drop one or two cans of LTD's or other lower yield cargo at a time for them to either practice manual scooping or use the limpets to see how easy it is until full then either practice docking or use the Advanced Docking Computer to speed up the process.
Step 11: Go back to INARA.cz and set a Squadron bookmark on the nearest high yield Void Opal trader then get them to plot a course there using the HIGH Security filter in the galaxy map. Encourage them to drop into navigation beacons on the way to collect local system and market data for later use.
Step 12: Let them fly empty while you hold the "tasty cargo" so they don't get attacked and when they get to you, repeat step 10 until they have transferred all the Void Opals from your hold to the station and are now sitting on what, anywhere from 10 to 50 MCR or more and a significant Trade Rank increase.
------
They can now afford pretty much any A-Rated small ship they want but I recommend a DBX for the next session - Getting started with SRV driving and farming engineer materials out at Dav's Hope and if they want to, Jameson's Cobra and collecting the Meta-Alloys they'll need to unlock Farseer / FSDs.
IMPORTANT! Get that initial 3-6 hour time commitment BEFORE you start!
If they won't commit, put the whole thing off until they will or they may never come back.
