[SUGGESTION] In-game commander's manual

[Iskariot]

IN-GAME / IN-SHIP COMMANDER'S MANUAL
-----------------------------------------

I very often come across cmdrs on the forums that seem to be unaware of fundamental game mechanics and game background story... and they are not at all always new players.
I have come to wonder why there is no such manual viewable via our HUD in a way similar to the full-screen Powerplay screen, Engineers screen and Galnet news screen.

Of course this is a game in development, but that is not an argument not to have such a manual that always reflects the current state of the game and that is updated when needed. With an always online game like Elite this is easier to achieve than ever before.
We had a static paper manual for the prequel games and of course that would not be practical for ED as the game is under development and still changes all the time.
An in-ship updatable manual would however be not a problem at all. It would be a great convenience for all.
It would be great to have an in-game source for this kind of information.

This in-ship manual should be worded in a way that is consistent for the game universe.
It should never refer to Elite as a game.
It should for example not talk about PC requirements and stuff like that.
It should address the commander as a commander in the Elite universe, and never as a player of a game.


WHAT THE MANUAL SHOULD CONTAIN:
---------------------------------------------
* Fluff, elite universe timeline
* Game mechanics with for example chapters about:
-- navigation and flight
-- uss, res, poi
-- combat,
-- shipyard,
-- trading,
-- mining,
-- crime system,
-- bounty hunting
-- powerplay,
-- ship interdiction,
-- engineers etc.
* Overview of all ships in the game
* Overview of all ship modules in the game
* Overview of all weapons in the game
* Overview of all commodities (what they are, where they can be bought; high tech, industrial, military etc.)
* List of abbreviations and terminology used by commanders like for example USS, HazRes, Loop of shame, 7 second rule etc.

In this manual all kinds of practical tips could be given like the 7 second rule for approaching stations in supercruise to prevent overshooting (loop of shame), or ways to approach planetary bases, or how to best handle high gravity planets in relatively light and heavy ships.

Perhaps some recommended outfittings for different situations could be given as an example.

The manual should also provide a good search function!

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It is of course a lot of work to create such a commander's manual at first, but when you have the baseline completed you can then simply modify and add to this core as needed when new patches or expansions get released.
This way the players will always have an up to date manual.

I think the game desperately needs such an in-ship manual. Not just for the new commanders, but also for those of us who have been playing ED since the beginning. In a game like Elite there is always new stuff we can learn.
A manual like this would increase the accessibility of the game immensely.

 

[DocLooshkin]

Hello, Iskariot.

+1. I'm in favour of this idea, although I think it would work better with more than one publication. A single guide to all the game's basics is very obviously a game manual, regardless of how well it's written. If we want something that feels lore-friendly, then I think it would make more sense to have a set of distinctly separate guides. It would also be easier for people to read and reference - and easier for the writers to update, as and when needed.

I'd like to see:

• A flight manual, concentrating on explaining the basics, as this will be an important resource for beginners, if the idea is implemented. These should be fairly generic, but should have a separate segment on the individual ship the player happens to be in. It would make most sense for this to be published by the ships manufacturer, with the writing stylised accordingly;

• A set of simple guides for each major career, focussed on free play but also containing basic walkthroughs of relevant missions, as some of them can be really vague for newcomers. These seem like publications the PF would be inclined to create and distribute, or perhaps some new in-game trade groups could be created, just for the sake of new visuals;

• A single guide discussing threats to safety in ED. Unlike EDs actual, current manual, it should properly discuss the various pirates and psychotics players are likely to encounter and the basics of how not to get killed by them. This seems like something half the game's institutions would be happy to write, especially the insurers;

• PowerPlay and Engineers currently have their own dedicated help pages in the game. It might be good for them to have standalone mini-manuals, with the current help pages 'pulling out' information from those and offering links to their respective, full mini-manuals. This would make the information feel like something that's actually in the game, rather than imposed upon it as a player convenience, which is how they feel at present. I'm not sure who'd want to publish these in the game - perhaps the PF? ;

• I'm not keen on those godlike overviews, as it seems like too much information and very much out of keeping with the game as it is at present. Also, FD would need to either code and maintain an auto-updating smart manual, or someone would have to maintain them by hand. That seems a bit wasteful, given that the same information is freely and widely available on the net, in various formats... ;

• ... but it would make sense to have some basic in-game guides to areas of the bubble, which could include both confirmed lore about the ED galaxy, as well as information on where the trickier-to-find ships and components can be bought. The PF seem like the right publisher to me;

• A guide to pilot's slang seems reasonable, but I can't help but wonder if new pilots might be better off learning it from old pilots, instead.

- - - - -

Beyond the original suggestion, I can envisage certain other benefits to getting this into the game, assuming FD is inclined to do this.

• We currently have the GalNet news service, which does an astoundingly good job of creating the tone and general sense of a news service, with just a relatively simple animation, a bouncy newsroom tune and a basic newsreader. If a similar approach is taken here, we could get a much broader sense of the cultures at work in the ED galaxy, just through this kind of basic, animated branding.

Since most of the basic interface is coded for GalNet (everything we really need seems to be there already, apart from a mini-interface to switch to publication view while in flight), it seems like the dev resources needed might be fairly light, localisation team resources notwithstanding. Most of the work would seem to be in creating an animation and a little tune for each publisher. If it works as well as GalNet, that's a lot of cultural bang for very little buck, as it were.

• GalNet features player-created news reports. If FD is so inclined, we could get player-created guides to various things, subject to similar editing restrictions and provided under common branding. Advanced career guides, high-detail reports going beyond GalNet, technical analyses of the latest equipment, etc. Normally, I'm wary of player-created content in ED - one idiot copying material from elsewhere could cause problems - but with guides to things that only exist in ED, the risks seem low enough not to worry about.

- - - - -

Thank you for your suggestion, Iskariot. I doubt my demented ravings are quite what you expected by way of reply, but don't let me put you off - a manual's a good idea, in any form.

 

[Lestat]

another idea is have links to tutorials listed also

 

[Iskariot]

another idea is have links to tutorials listed also

You mean links to youtube tutorials?
I am against that.
As I explained I think that a manual accessible from the HUD in the ship itself, while playing the game, should conform to the game's internal universe and not refer to youtube or the forums at all. Currently the ED youtube tutorials are mentioned on the ED launcher, which is the right place for it.

This in-ship manual should be worded in a way that is consistent for the game universe.
It should never refer to Elite as a game.
It should for example not talk about PC requirements and stuff like that.
It should address the commander as a commander in the Elite universe, and never as a player of a game.