ST: What would you like included in in-game help?

[slayernz]

Okay - so I really do think there would be value having an in-game help thingy ala TA within ST RPG. There are so many valuable bits of information that seem to only be available if you spend much of your life in these forums. Good thing for me that I seem to do just that. However, it's been pointed out on numerous occasions that this approach does limit the game understanding.

We have a wiki ... admittedly it's only half-formed and in need of several coats of paint, some additional framing, some furniture, and probably a floor and roof

Also - people tend not to go out of a game when they want to know what to do. Instead they try and see if there is something that provides information there and then.

So what do I propose?

A button within the game (not just on the home page) that could be labelled "Codex" or "Guide" or even "Help".

Instead of it being a single flat file, it should be grouped into several headings. You can go into each heading for more information.

Things like:

• Background
  
• Officers and bonuses
  
• What the various faction conflicts mean
  
• Things about space travel
  
• Things about combat
  
• Things about Urban actions
  
• Things about Wilderness actions
  
• Other stuff that I can't classify
  
• More stuff that could be important too
  
• Why Cadar is the best faction and Steel Song suck
  

Obviously my groupings need improvement - Cory might see a much more logical approach.

What we do need is "what to include in the help section".

Off hand, I can think of:

• What do rumors mean
  
• Hold bonuses
  
• What benefits do each of the skills/abilities actually provide
  
• What to the ship stats mean
  
• How to get the most fuel efficient ships
  
• What do the officers do
  
• How to unlock awards
  
• How to finally eliminate Steel Song once and for all
  

Help me think of more topics

[fallen]

slayernz - the professions and how to use their special bonuses.

[shallowthought]

Someone posted this guide on the forums a while back, can't remember who it was. But this basically covers everything you need to know to play the game.

Attachments:

[whitegauntlet]

Yeah. The game took me a while to figure out. A more advanced help section would be awesome.

[phantombudgie]

May 12, 2012 11:06:16 GMT -5 shallowthought said:

Someone posted this guide on the forums a while back, can't remember who it was. But this basically covers everything you need to know to play the game.

Why is this not included with the game with a button in the start screen called "manual" ?

I like finding things out, but some of these things are difficult to discover by yourself. Like "increases chances of encounters by X%" or you need 10% of your hold full of a certain good to increase the effectiveness of an officer by Y%.

I have read through much of this forum, and found the lists of ship stats and the pdf which basically reprints all the in-game information and text. None of these were particularly useful so it would be good to at least post this guide in the Hints and Tips sticky thread.

This is an awesome game and I need all the help I can get to survive!

p.s. "Don't try ramming a high-level enemy with a much larger Hull rating, or you will be in need of your escape shutle." Just discovered this today.

[fallen]

What are other thoughts on that manual? Does it cover all the topics desired? Anyone remember who posted it? I can never get search to work on this forum.

[slayernz]

That PDF is great - but I'm thinking that the help file needs to be a little more succinct ... 21 pages of document (without the links) would translate to a huge number of android screen pages.

Maybe that would at least be the starting point and I (or we) can start distilling the essence of the document into something more consumable in-game.

(Edit)
Whacked in a poll to see what people think. Note that some things are easier to do than others - so if you want the best/fullest implementation, it could take a lot longer than a more simple approach.
(/Edit)

[shallowthought]

PDF isn't great for a help file. Couldn't this be converted to html with links and viewed through the phone browser? Or maybe android has some help file format, like .chm for windows? But I think the pdf covers pretty much everything for the game.

[Fenikso]

May 12, 2012 11:06:16 GMT -5 shallowthought said:

Someone posted this guide on the forums a while back, can't remember who it was.

That was me - here. And I discourage posting a copy, a link would be better as I tend to think about updating it once in a while. Of course it would be Great if it goes obsolete by in-game manual update . Also it is just +/- copy-paste from forum posts.

What I am really missing is better description of boarding system upgrades. And I am also missing some description about how much weapons in hold help boarding actions. I feel often that the game is not giving enough feedback compared to what real Captain would see on his ship.

[fallen]

Fenikso - I would agree that a broken out HTML version is better for the phone. I just wanted to make sure we could get your permission to re-use the content and give you credit if we do any work with it. Thanks for coming forward!

@survey team - when we say "indexed help" do you mean that when you click "Help" on the main menu, you go to an HTML file that has a TOC of topics for browsing. Yes?

[shallowthought]

Fenikso - sorry, I tried to find the original post but couldn't, so I posted the guide in the hope that you would come forwards.

fallen - that sounds like the best way of doing it for viewing on a phone

Also, 100th post!!

[slayernz]

Hey Fallen - yup, it's meant that when you press the Help button, it takes you to a list of topics. Selecting one of those topics takes you to a new page.

In other words ... multi-page help. This is different to the TA help (at least last when I used it) ... TA help was a single flat help file. That meant in order to find what you wanted, you had to scroll/swipe your way down heaps of irrelevant content.

[whitegauntlet]

^ And yet again, seconded.

[phantombudgie]

Add a header of Combat to the manual. Various details are present in the manual but they would be extra helpful assembled into one heading (even if you repeat stuff). People get to the combat screen for the first time and try various options but start out not knowing much. Maybe have a section along the lines of a general description of the actions available in the combat screen and what you need to do to improve your chances of each action.

E.g. "Battle Stations" takes you into combat with another vessel.
You start out at long range which is best for torpedoes (highlighted with your captain's intuition) but if you have a low number of sails on your ship (check via the status screen) or you have very low level of Tactics, your chances of success may be low. If the enemy captain is a much higher level than you this will also make it less likely you will be sucessful in hitting them with guns/torp etc... if you have many guns try closing to mid range (easier for higher piot skill). Closing to close range allows you to target specific areas of the ship (etc.) and gives you the option to attempt to board the enemy ship. This requires a relatively large number of crew on your ship to ensure a reasonable chance of success, and also relies on your Intimidate and Warrior skills...

I appreciate this is a rather poor illustration of what would be a good help guide but I hope you get the idea.

[shallowthought]

Right, I'm going to gather together whatever documentation I can and stick it all together as a load of html pages. Does anyone have hosting or will I just post it here as a .zip when finished? (probably take a week or longer given the amount of stuff to go through)