Training/Tutorial Suggestion Thread

[Glaran K'erman]

Ever since joining the team Nathanael (NathanKell) has been hard at work squashing bugs at a leopard’s pace and this week is no exception. His time has been spent between some bugs that popped up due to Unity 5’s new physics system and working on the tutorials. In fact, the latter has to do with the former as a lot of the physics systems in KSP have changed in recent times and the tutorials sometimes needed to be updated to reflect that. If you have some small tips to improve the tutorials please leave a comment on our forums.

 

Well as this post made clear that the tutorials mentioned in the Dev Notes were referring to the training missions, it has also been made clear by the above that they are being updated! Haven't seen a thread dedicated to it yet so I'd thought I would start it up. So what do you think are the most important things for new players to be introduced to?

I would offer an ascent profile tutorial for rockets (normal) and spaceplanes (advanced)

[Wjolcz]

I would like to have a scenario creator so we can create and share scenarios/tutorials ourselves. Just a tool that let's you put vessels around bodies and create windows with text (the ones with Wernher and the other guy) when needed. Would have to be like Hyper Edit, I guess.

Edited December 25, 2015 by Veeltch

[ThaZeus]

I would say to add any kind of aero plane building and flying tutorial because I still suck at makeing planes.

Edited December 26, 2015 by ThaZeus
Auto correct!

[Hcube]

I strongly suggest changing the ships that are given to you in tutorials like asteroid redirect : it turns sloooooooooooowly, has no maneuverability, awful TWR and terrible design : in fact that ship has a big orange tank, four nukes and a small tank for each nuke, without fuel transfer so that you have to manually transfer fuel from the main tank to each of the four tanks every ten seconds. It is very frustrating and should repel new players from playing the game. 

 

My experience with the tutorials is that they make easy stuff look really hard. I think that simply proposing simple and efficient spaceships would do the job, because other than that the way it's explained is great

[Stone Blue]

44 minutes ago, Hcube said:

I strongly suggest changing the ships that are given to you in tutorials like asteroid redirect : it turns sloooooooooooowly, has no maneuverability, awful TWR and terrible design : in fact that ship has a big orange tank, four nukes and a small tank for each nuke, without fuel transfer so that you have to manually transfer fuel from the main tank to each of the four tanks every ten seconds. It is very frustrating and should repel new players from playing the game. 

 

My experience with the tutorials is that they make easy stuff look really hard. I think that simply proposing simple and efficient spaceships would do the job, because other than that the way it's explained is great

Hehe... It would be nice to have efficient, optimized, working ships for the tutorials.... However, Squad hasnt even provided working optimized aircrafts in the game itself... I dont think the stock crafts have been updated since very early alpha or beta releases of the game... Its a struggle to fly some of the stock aircraft, as they arent even trimmed properly and cant hold stable "neutral" flight with no user input... I realise you dont want a craft that will just fly itself forever, but having an aircraft practically lose control as soon as there is no user input on flight controls, and having to constantly struggle with pitch/yaw adjustments is quite frustrating for a new a player...

2nd statement I agree with also... The way the tutorials are now, I think it would be best to not even HAVE them... Having broken tutorials, that new players will assume are working, updated and optimized, will only frustrate new players and turn them off the game...Making them angry & 2nd guessing themselves for spending $$ on it...
I think it would turn more players away from the game, than those who would turn away, because there are NO tutorials at all....

Edited December 26, 2015 by Stone Blue

[Hcube]

59 minutes ago, Stone Blue said:

Hehe... It would be nice to have efficient, optimized, working ships for the tutorials.... However, Squad hasnt even provided working optimized aircrafts in the game itself... I dont think the stock crafts have been updated since very early alpha or beta releases of the game... Its a struggle to fly some of the stock aircraft, as they arent even trimmed properly and cant hold stable "neutral" flight with no user input... I realise you dont want a craft that will just fly itself forever, but having an aircraft practically lose control as soon as there is no user input on flight controls, and having to constantly struggle with pitch/yaw adjustments is quite frustrating for a new a player...

2nd statement I agree with also... The way the tutorials are now, I think it would be best to not even HAVE them... Having broken tutorials, that new players will assume are working, updated and optimized, will only frustrate new players and turn them off the game...Making them angry & 2nd guessing themselves for spending $$ on it...
I think it would turn more players away from the game, than those who would turn away, because there are NO tutorials at all....

Yeah, i don't really mind about stock vessels since when you try them out it makes you want to do an improved version of it. But on a tutorial : it's better to have the best possible stuff IMO

[pandaman]

18 hours ago, Hcube said:

Yeah, i don't really mind about stock vessels since when you try them out it makes you want to do an improved version of it. But on a tutorial : it's better to have the best possible stuff IMO

I think for tutorials you need 'more than adequate with a margin for error' rather than 'best possible'.  The tutorials do need to be comfortably doable, but not too easy (depending on what they are for) otherwise there is a risk of not actually teaching anything.

[Hcube]

23 minutes ago, pandaman said:

I think for tutorials you need 'more than adequate with a margin for error' rather than 'best possible'.  The tutorials do need to be comfortably doable, but not too easy (depending on what they are for) otherwise there is a risk of not actually teaching anything.

Even with an amazing ship, it still takes practice and skill to rendez-vous, catch an asteroid or a free-return trajectory. So i think that having the best ship id actually a great way of learning. I don't think that there is a risk of not teaching anything ^^

[pandaman]

3 hours ago, Hcube said:

Even with an amazing ship, it still takes practice and skill to rendez-vous, catch an asteroid or a free-return trajectory. So i think that having the best ship id actually a great way of learning. I don't think that there is a risk of not teaching anything ^^

Agreed, though as I said I think it depends on what the particular tutorial is for.

For a concept introduction tutorial, such as for an inital introduction to rendezvous and docking then yes the ship should have lots of excess fuel and monoprop and be well balanced to allow time to teach the concepts properly.

But to teach the benefits of a correct gravity turn to achieve say a stable 100km orbit, the ship should have more than enough fuel for the job, but not so much that launch profile doesn't matter. That way the student can see that methods A and B use all the fuel too quickly while method C achieves the desired orbit with some left over.

Ultimately, of course, it comes down to how well the tutorials are crafted.

[Glaran K'erman]

Only going to push-up-post (PUP) this once, so no worries, just want to give a last chance to those who didn't see this thread or forgot to add to it before I let it die. These things are important people , they help get new people into the game and what is more important than that!

 

So last chance, any final thoughts on what you think is needed?

Edit: Resurrected

Edited January 6, 2016 by Glaran K'erman

[Glaran K'erman]

Read the Dev Notes and was great to see the tutorials were mentioned! Thought of this just now however...@NathanKell is too late to stop the plague that is the "stop-and-drop" landing technique on atmo-less bodies! People get scared they can't hit their target, but they can! I know it!

[NathanKell]

There's a lot that needs to be improved, so it remains up in the air just how much we can get in. But thanks for the suggestion.

[tater]

Good luck with the tutorials, Nathan. I should play them again and give you feedback (assuming you want/need any).

My daughter's science teacher (a Ph.D. Biologist) had a steep learning curve I think (I turned him on to KSP), and I think that my ease with the tutorials was in no small part due to already understanding orbital mechanics.

[KSK]

I'm not sure how well this would work but I'd be tempted to have the tutorials explain all the quirks of the user interface (how to do Science, what Docking mode is, how to do fuel transfers, what those weird controls in the VAB do... etc. etc.) - and that's it. Show players how to use the game but not how to play it, if that makes sense. 

I think it would be quite possible to tutorial KSP to death. I truly don't mean to be snarky but where do you stop? A tutorial about getting to orbit. That's nice, gives new players a helping hand. But now they're stuck because they want to go to the Mün. No problem - we can do a tutorial for that. Minmus - yep we can cover that too. The problem is that KSP is the kind of game where there's always another hill to climb and unless you want to provide tutorials for absolutely everything, at some point the players will need to start figuring stuff out for themselves.

So show them how to use the interface and then let them cut their teeth on the early stuff and get into that 'figuring things out' mindset early on. Don't give them the false hope of providing tutorials for the easier stuff and then leave them even more stuck when it comes to the harder stuff.

Give a player a rocket and they'll have one rocket. Teach them to build rockets and they'll have as many rockets as they ever need.

[pandaman]

The tutorials definitely need to cover all the UI features and controls (how to'use' the game as KSK put it) as well as covering the settings menus.

But I think some basic guides should also be included that cover things like how to reach orbit, dock, land etc for those who want them.  These things can be quite difficult and frustrating for new players and a 'nudge' in the right direction can do no harm.  Coupled with well thought out tutorial scenarios that cover these aspects in more detail.

[Guest]

Players, both new and old, definitely need a place to find current information on game mechanics. Changes under the hood from version to version can be just as frustrating for experienced players as learning the basics is for new players, if not more so. However, I worry about the size of the download for the game and for updates bloating if Squad tries to add tutorials for everything. Perhaps in addition to updating the basic tutorials that are already present, Squad could add links in the game's tutorial section that point to to well maintained wiki pages. It can be difficult to find current and relevant information through web or forum searches because of all the outdated information that already exists. And even if you find a current thread relating to a particular game change, it is often flooded with irrelevant opinions rather than actual fact based on game code.