We Should Support The Ranters...

[NeoMorph]

One thing that I have noticed about the "I'm giving up" thread is that most of us are actually supporting the new player and not saying "Can I have your stuff" or "See ya!" which is awesome. We really should take this further and compile a FAQ that helps as much with new stuff as possible. I'm not talking explaining hohmann transfers in detail, I'm talking going a bit further than the current tutorials handle.

Remember all the posts about "Is There An Auto Dock Mod?" because so many steam users were having problems with docking. I know when I was having problems with something as simple as hitting the F4 button by accident and not knowing where the other craft was was a simple error but god, did it frustrate me.

My point is, the people who rant are the players who would most likely stay if they could only get over docking that first time. If you are ranting it usually means that you care enough that you want the game to work for you.

To be honest I haven't found any FAQs for newbie Kerbonauts... did we lose them when the forums got nuked?

[Crush]

Or we could just accept the fact that KSP isn't a game for everyone.

But when you would like to involve yourself in writing some tutorials, the wiki is the right place to go.

[NeoMorph]

That's what I mean... there is a basic orbiting tutorial in the wiki which is sooooooo heavy in math that it would put off Hawking (well, maybe not) lol.

There needs to me a set of links to Scotts tutorials for a start off... A lot of things that users have problem with is things that are reasonably simple when you understand the basics. It's learning those basics that is currently difficult for new players. I definitely got over a "hill" where things went from being a chore to being enjoyable. If we help new players get over that hill then they most likely will be long time players. The ones who reach the hill and can't get over it end up ditching what is an awesome game/sim that they never get to truly see it properly.

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

Is this was you mean?

[Galileo Kerbonaut]

If someone has an interest in anything, he/she will start finding information on it. Nowadays Google is a great place to start, it even finds those Scott Manley videos! I'm not trying to put your idea down but to be honest: most of the questions I had, were answered by doing a simple Google search.

[Voidryder]

Can I have your stuff?

Edited May 11, 2013 by Voidryder
Typo

[Procyon]

Is this was you mean?

I So need to print that and take it to work!!

[Wait- Was That Important?]

One thing that I have noticed about the "I'm giving up" thread is that most of us are actually supporting the new player and not saying "Can I have your stuff" or "See ya!" which is awesome. We really should take this further and compile a FAQ that helps as much with new stuff as possible. I'm not talking explaining hohmann transfers in detail, I'm talking going a bit further than the current tutorials handle.

Explaining basic orbital mechanics isn't really tough unless the OP is ridiculously dense, as most of us are intimately familiar with orbital mechanics now. For that matter, since KSP doesn't have a multiplayer of sorts, there's really no place for asinine begging.

Remember all the posts about "Is There An Auto Dock Mod?" because so many steam users were having problems with docking. I know when I was having problems with something as simple as hitting the F4 button by accident and not knowing where the other craft was was a simple error but god, did it frustrate me.

Those were a bit annoying as most of the people posting those could've browsed through the addons section of the forum for a few minutes and found exactly what they needed. Docking is tough- just because I learned without MechJeb, ORDA, hell, even ASAS or a decent tutorial doesn't mean I expect others to pick it up as fast as I. The only reason people got exasperated is that some of the newest guys didn't seem to want to listen or even care.

My point is, the people who rant are the players who would most likely stay if they could only get over docking that first time. If you are ranting it usually means that you care enough that you want the game to work for you.

To be honest I haven't found any FAQs for newbie Kerbonauts... did we lose them when the forums got nuked?

Actually, I've long held the belief that people who rant about a game within the first week for a long amount of time tend not to be those who will stay. Sure, there's aggravating moments when you're first starting off, but if you rant to the point of ragequitting then maybe you don't have enough patience for what can, at times, be an incredibly trying game through its realism.

You have a good point about the FAQ's however: many player-made tutorials were lost forever thanks to the forum wipe, and many wiki tutorials are either too unengaging or overly math-heavy. We could do with people making better newb-friendly text tutorials.

[Specialist290]

It's funny that you're posting this now; the same sort of thought (from a different forum) inspired me to try to compile links to different tutorials into a single thread over in the "How-To" section. Unfortunately, it seems like the Great Forum Kraken ate most of the more recent tutorials, many of which haven't been replaced.

[Flymetothemun]

I think us, as people who know basic orbital stuff intuitively, teaching newcomers orbital stuff could be likened to this:

(Video button doesn't seem to be working for me)

[air805ronin]

It's funny that you're posting this now; the same sort of thought (from a different forum) inspired me to try to compile links to different tutorials into a single thread over in the "How-To" section. Unfortunately, it seems like the Great Forum Kraken ate most of the more recent tutorials, many of which haven't been replaced.

I lost mine, reposted, but I think you probably have all the content I had contained in other guides and probably better written. If its bad please don't include it.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/24915-Beginner-s-Guide

[Specialist290]

I think us, as people who know basic orbital stuff intuitively, teaching newcomers orbital stuff could be likened to this:

(Video button doesn't seem to be working for me)

Not exactly the best example to use: Sheldon is basically a textbook Insufferable Genius whose teaching methods are defeated as much by his own social awkwardness as by Penny's ignorance. He honestly does suck at teaching.

EDIT:

I lost mine, reposted, but I think you probably have all the content I had contained in other guides and probably better written. If its bad please don't include it.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/24915-Beginner-s-Guide

Thanks! Looks like it'll be a great addition to the list.

Edited May 11, 2013 by Specialist290

[NeoMorph]

I lost mine, reposted, but I think you probably have all the content I had contained in other guides and probably better written. If its bad please don't include it.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/24915-Beginner-s-Guide

YES! This is the sort of thing that we need to be able to point new players to. That damned Kraken has a lot to answer to. Also it's excellent having a PDF because it works great on iPad. I tend to drop manuals and such into my dropbox which is linked to my iPad so that I can view the manuals easier. So BIG THUMBS UP air805ronin.

[NeoMorph]

Actually, I've long held the belief that people who rant about a game within the first week for a long amount of time tend not to be those who will stay. Sure, there's aggravating moments when you're first starting off, but if you rant to the point of ragequitting then maybe you don't have enough patience for what can, at times, be an incredibly trying game through its realism.

You have a good point about the FAQ's however: many player-made tutorials were lost forever thanks to the forum wipe, and many wiki tutorials are either too unengaging or overly math-heavy. We could do with people making better newb-friendly text tutorials.

Actually I was ranting at the beginning because I didn't know the questions to ask, let alone finding the answers on Google. Granted, this is an Alpha game but trying to dig through the forums to find the instructions, the wiki and the youtube videos was hard because there was no structure to the help posts. I was really struggling at the beginning because of this and I bet others have faced the same problems. I just wish I had found some of these other tutorials earlier. In the end I learned most of what I needed from Scott Manley vids lol.

Oh and maybe we should include a link in our sigs... Specialist290, air805ronin is that ok to link to your tutorials?

[air805ronin]

Oh and maybe we should include a link in our sigs... Specialist290, air805ronin is that ok to link to your tutorials?

Back before the forum thing happened, it was stickied so link away.

I plan on revising it when I get a break from work. The first mission to orbit the Mun uses a probe core and I have found beginners have issues steering them. I wanted to expose them to unmanned vs. manned but I'm rethinking that. Or maybe just an alternate ship...

Oh and I also learned a lot from Scott Manley. Thumbs up, Scott!. ...me and the fiancee are headed up to England and Scotland for our honeymoon next year. She wants to hunt down your family and kill them for teaching me to play this game. I'll keep her in line.

[Galileo Kerbonaut]

I was really struggling at the beginning because of this and I bet others have faced the same problems

I'm still struggling, I thought that was the whole point of the game!? Everyone who's capable of playing KSP, should be able to search things like: "Kerbal + Delta V", "Kerbal + how to ascent a rocket"; it's hardly rocket science.

I think most people who rant about the game, are either very young and from the generation: I want it all, and I want it now, or are utterly lazy and don't care to do their own research. Really, most questions on forums in general aren't even necessary if the poster used Google in the first place. Usually the answers pops up within the first 10 results.

[benjiful9000]

[closed]

Edited July 4, 2021 by benjiful9000
Cleaning house

[bsalis]

The game really needs a comprehensive manual. Something that is useful for beginners, but also has material for intermediate and advanced players. It needs to cover game features, but also more generic orbital mechanics (and more) that apply IRL. It should be accessible to regular gamer folk, but also have the heavy math side of things in the appendix for those that would like to drill down into that.

IMO the place for this is the Wiki. Done by a Squad employee with material (crowd) sourced from the community.

Problem is, the game is not finished. So it is probably not worth doing yet. For example, any SSTO Spaceplane guide/tutorial written before .18 is mostly useless now. I wouldn't mind writing one now for .19, but it too would be useless after the aerodynamic rewrite.

[Tristavius]

The problem I found when starting KSP was actually an ABUNDANCE of information. Everyone seems to be making tutorial videos... and a lot of them are badly done (though there are many brilliant ones out there). I think this can lead to many new people getting bad advice.

The other issue definitely is the language... I've taught a couple of colleagues a few things this last week and telling them to 'right, burn retrograde now to reduce your apoapsis' has met with dumbfounded looks from very intelligent people, even though I spent an hour explaining what both of those meant earlier. Telling people, 'right, spin that ball until you see the green cross then activate your thrusters' and they get it. When doing docking for the first time I've seen very few good descriptions of adjusting your approach and sometimes I just want to shout 'Turn on RCS and use I-J-K-L to move the yellow wings into the middle of the pink circle'... tell a new person that and they actually GET it... okay so they don't get the theory of what it is they're actually DOING, but that can come later.

In short, for many people to learn how to do something, they need to do it 'idiots guide to' style and once they've done it, they'll begin to understand what they've done. Too many guides get right into terminology and science.

[Eric S]

Not exactly the best example to use: Sheldon is basically a textbook Insufferable Genius whose teaching methods are defeated as much by his own social awkwardness as by Penny's ignorance. He honestly does suck at teaching.

I once had a physics professor (physics 183 if I remember right, so not a class you'd be required to take unless you were involved in a science curriculum of some sorts). He was a highly regarded in his field, and the physics department considered his presence a boon. However, I had him the first semester he was involved in that university, so there was a bit of a learning experience going on even from the Physics department's point of view.

The man was brilliant, and the level of physics he was teaching was basic enough to him that he found it intuitive. And that's where the problem starts. Since he found it intuitive, he had never actually gone through the process of learning it, so he really didn't understand how to impart that knowledge to a room full of students that didn't find it intuitive. And yet, the defect was obviously with us because it was such simple and obvious stuff. And yes, he'd say that during rants. One time he went so far as to call the entire class a bunch of sheep.

At the end of the semester, they quietly shuffled the teaching roster so that he never taught that level of physics again.

And I get it. I'm the same way with programming. I was taking lvl 300 or 400 classes before any professor taught me anything that I hadn't worked out for myself intuitively before starting college. The only computer science class I ever had any problems with was one taught by the kind of professor who's tests consisted of parroting definitions, and one missing word would drop your score by 25%. I had a harder time in that class than my classmates that had always had to work hard.

Despite that, I can't teach programming because for me, it's all so intuitive that I barely have to think about it. Of course you do this then that, that's how it works. I have a very hard time breaking down how I do the basic steps.

Long story short, don't assume that because you had to work hard to learn things in this game that that means that you're the wrong person to try to teach it, or to write up a tutorial on it. Knowing how you learned it is as important as what you learned.

[Specialist290]

I have to agree with Tristavius there. The problem isn't so much one of the information not being available, it's more a high "signal-to-noise" ratio, especially from people who take other's knowledge of technical jargon for granted.

EDIT: And Eric S. makes a good point as well, which I think ties in with mine. Those who grasp these things intuitively are less likely to catch the bits that other people's brains get snagged on and try to smooth them out.

Edited May 11, 2013 by Specialist290

[NeoMorph]

Yeah, signal to noise is right... Trying to find the RIGHT information is as harder than finding ANY information. And explaining stuff in a way that doesn't make your brain go "BOING!" is harder still.

I still remember one of my bosses in my first job who used to assume that you understood all the terms he mentioned that made him sound like he was talking wookie with a hint of gobbledygook. Another boss commented that if this guy ever came across a bomb in the building, rather than running off and hiding like any other person he would start reprogramming it and explaining why the bomber had made it wrong in the first place.

[Tristavius]

Haha, love the signal-to-noise ratio comparison - that's what I spend my entire day complaining about at work at the moment.

[AmpsterMan]

There is also a section of the forums that is already dedicated to this. There is even a stickied thread that very adequetly explains orbital mechanics.

In the end however, people will always rant and leave. This is a game that is very difficult and it's already as easy as it is going to be.

Trial by fire and learning by explosion is almost part of the gameplay. Landing on Mun is almost a rite of passage. If you have done that, you are well on your way to enjoying this game