Help file - combat flow charts

[bookworm21]

Recently, my brother has barely emerged from his room, and snatches of rousing orchestral music can be heard alongside a relentless tapping sound.

Yes, my little bro has discovered the joy of Star Traders.

This has brought up several things that a complete n00b has wanted explaining which weren't in the tutorial.

Primarily, a sort of combat tutorial would be very helpful, as he had no idea on the differences between 'acknowledge' and 'ignore', for example. Also a link to the main help file from the initial starting sequence might help.

Looking stuff up in the manual, there are several outcomes in the flow charts that arent explained.

For example:

'Report' I know it can happen after a draw, but what does it do?

'Suspect high level smuggler' - does this lose you rep?

Also the '?' boxes. Are they intentional or just placeholders?

Thanks for checking these out.

[Cory Trese]

I will take a look. My brother has gone through several ST phases himself, so I understand where you are at.

[gnubee]

Your help file does need some work. I'm a Newbie (note my name...). You should have more not on GAME mechanics, but on simple control screens (I only have looked at it on iOS, I'm not firing up the Xoom to see it on droid).

There APPEARS to be no easy or quick way to get to NAV. I have found the tap/hold system quite unresponsive across all tested devices (iOS 9.3.1, iPhone 6+, original iPad Air, and iPad Pro (have not tested on original iPad mini yet (and no, I did not program in LISP))).

The planet info does not always display, and sometimes hold is not interpreted correctly so the ship wanders on it's own. I'd like an easy way to see grid COORDINATES, but that has never come up.

The HELP FILES should have a few places where they CLEARLY label each of the icons - or permit an icon with some text. I get grid icon, but sometimes hit the other wrong ones. My first game is going to be terminated and restarted because of this.

Help Files ought to go through a cleanly configured spell checker. If you can afford an editor - the person kind that fixes grammar - that would be really nice.

I can see that when I get familiar with the interface, this will get better. But work here could improve acceptance.

[fallen]

gnubee - thanks for the feedback on this. We are always working to improve. Hopefully as you get more familiar with the game, things will come easier. The game is coming up on its 6th year anniversary, so there is always more to do!

[gnubee]

Thank YOU. I try to be clear and informative in my feedback, and as I learn I tend to give a lot of it. It's never intended to be anything but helpful to the developers. When I was a product manager, it was always difficult to get good feedback from new users - and to be able to find new users. Only new users are experiencing the learning curve for the first time, and seeing the product with fresh eyes. I'm really only playing a few minutes to half an hour a day, and may spend twice that checking the manual looking to self-correct.

I'm ancient in software user years (first got online in '86 - was a moderator on BIX, the Byte Information Exchange run by McGraw-Hill's BYTE magazine) and have plenty of real-world activity. If you're young, you won't recall BYTE magazine, but it and Dr. Dobb's Journal (Running Lite without overbyte) were the first consumer-techie computer magazines.

[bookworm21]

gnubee

I find the 'zoom out' button (looks like a grid iirc) will let you select planets and sectors with a single tap, which is much more responsive. This will also give you quick access to the 'nav' button

Edit:

Agree that it is not the most obvious to find