Suggestions for Nubtron

from Saktoth

The com should have the blue circles when it wants you to select him.

Nubtron should not tell you to turn on the metalmap. Most maps do this automatically so just get them to build a metal extractor and then tell them about the green spot. f4 Is just more info the player doesnt need.

Ideally, nubtron would use little arrow indicators to point towards and highlight metal spots, perhaps something can be done like easymetal to identify mex spots if it doesnt lag everything to hell?

At some point, it should indicate the resource bars, to show exactly what the structures are doing. It should do this by giving an arrow pointing at them or a flashing border, rather than saying 'look at the top of the screen' in text.

Nubtron should highlight the icons of the structure you want to build in the buildmenu.

The 'Wait to finish' menu should have information about what you're building (the tip?).

For your second solar, it should teach you about click-and-drag shift queuing.

For the next 2 mexes (I know you wont always start with 3 but thats the ideal) it should teach you about individual placement shift queing. Possibly have this come after the click and drag shift queing, giving the instructions while the player finishes the solar line (not 'wait for it to finish'). Make it clear that by holding shift, he can queue up his mexes while not disrupting his current orders to make solars.

It should tell you to use your commander to assist your factory, or to expand with him, rather than just standing around. It should CERTAINLY NOT say 'wait for it to finish' when building the constructor!

Id suggest instructions telling you to expand with your commander. Its actually important to burn off your initial boost but instructions to this effect may be confusing. Any tutorial scenario we have should NOT use boost, but rather another solution to the slow fac issue (another reason why we should consider removing boost entirely).

The player should make a second LLT before expanding, so put that in. Then tell them to find a new metal spot and make a metal extractor then LLT, and just keep doing this, queing up orders (chance to practice queues). While they are doing this, their factory should be pumping, so you might want to include instructions on repeat or large unit orders.

Finally, tell them to use their force to probe for enemies either when their force equals a certain size, or their commander has a long enough queue and their factory is working (IE they've nothing else to do).

For a more general all purpose nubtron, it should shout at you when your resources get out of equilibrium. If you are in negative e, it should flash the E bar and tell you to make more energy. If you are stalling M, it should flash the M bar and tell you to expand.

If you have too much of both and an idle lab, it should tell you to make something. If your lab is running and you've idle cons, it should flash them and tell you to assist. If both these conditions are met and income is still larger than expenditure, it should tell you to make more constructors.

Once you have enough idle combat units, it should flash them and tell you to use them to attack the enemy.

CarRepairer: Thanks for the suggestions. I will take a shot at most of them as they are very feasible. But there is one area where I disagree. I don't want to teach players multitasking right off the bat, because Nubtron is intended for absolute beginners, not for making beginners into novices. I do want them to wait for the constructor to finish before flashing more tasks for them to do because I want them to see with their own eyes a factory building a unit from start to finish and watch it come out. If I tell them to click on the con icon and then go expand somewhere with their commander, they will come back later and not know what they are looking at.

It's okay for a beginner to take a few moments to pause and breathe while they take in the game for the first time. We will emphasize later that speed is an issue and not smelling the flowers, but you have to start somewhere.

I'm not against introducing the multitasking and shift-queueing eventually. Albeit these would take a lot more work than just more adding simple tasks like the other suggestions, so it won't be quick. You can't deny though that for absolute beginners this is better than nothing at all, just randomly trying to build crap without knowing a single thing. I'll start thinking of how to check for shift-queueing.

Saktoth: Shift-queing is vital if a player ever wants to do more than one thing at once. Its very, very important and not advanced at all.

CarRepairer: It's on the todo. I didn't put circles on the comm because I was hoping to push the player into getting used to ctrl+c. F4 is absolutely necessary, I am regularly irritated by maps that don't turn on the metalmap where I can't see the spots so I have to do it manually.

Also, you changed the colors in nubtron fonts to all be white. There are four different colors used in there: Title, tip (or subtitle), regular messages and emphasis color used to highlight keys and stuff to make it easier for the reader. These are very necessary, please suggest some good colors for title, tip and emphasis. The Title remains constant over several steps where the message changes, so it would be confusing if it all looked like one blurb of text where the first line is the same each step. I'd change the font size but space is a commodity. I'll try drawing a line. But emphasis needs a different color for sure.

Saktoth: It is MUCH more important to tell players about Shift than to tell them about f4. This thing obv isnt for gaming noobs, or you'd tell them which buttons to click to select and build and give orders. Control-C isnt even as important as Shift. Teach keybinds later. Can you detect if the metalmap is on or not? Is there a way to make the game go into metalview whenever someone builds a mex regardless of map settings (obv you can detect it!). At the least, show the 'press f4' after you have given him the instruction to build the mex, if the metalview isnt on already.

I changed the colours to white so it didnt look like a rainbow puked on a pink-grey box. Using coloured fonts to donote different pieces of information and headings is Internet Circa 1990's Geocities style web design. Never do this. I kept the Yellow for the Important Read This Now text, though it should probably be bold or italicized or in capitals.