> Newbies get a downgraded ship. No matter what ship type they choose,
> they end up in a CA. This CA will have det own disabled, and if you
> are > 2/3 CA phaser distance from the nearest enemy, your torps will
> linearly go down in speed to a minimum of 67% until you reach 4/3 of
> CA distance from an enemy ship, at which point they will not slow
> further.
>
I don't like this..it means they are learning a different mechanics of how
their ship works to how it will eventually work.  Plus it will screw up
DFing for anyone around them.

> I think the first change will not be  noticed by newbies, and the
> second change will help encourage them to play more aggressively,
> rather than the plinkage-from-afar that we see nowadays. Also
> important, the combination of changes will make a clued player not
> want to ever play the "newbie ship."
>
How about we just let CA and SC be the only 2 ships they can play
until they get to goal X.  Whether that be rank or something else.

> As compensation for the above, these players will get to see full
> damage on friendly/enemy ships, will see army counts on all planets
> (perhaps with a "Bomb Me!" message or similar), and will have some
> additional form of beeplite enabled to highlight "dangerous" enemy
> ships. Again, not enough to make a clued player use that ship.
>
No way on the damage thing.  You send that info to client and it will be
used for borgs.  Hell I'd be tempted to write a private borg client to show
enemy damage, that's a huge advantage :).  As for highlighting dangerous
enemy ships, how do you determine that?  As for army counts on all
planets, if you think it's a helpful feature to newbies, then how about
just give it to everyone?

> To implement this, upon client launch a dialog stating something like
> "This client is in newbie mode, which will allow you to see extra
> information on ships and planets to help learn the game. Some
> advanced features will be disabled in newbie mode." should be
> displayed. There should be an "I am an experienced player, use
> default ships" checkbox that permanently disables that message and
> disables newbie mode, caching the value for future launches. The
> client will then send a packet to the server that causes that slot to
> be flagged as a newbie, and ANY ship selection will result in a CA
> modified as above.
>
I still like the idea of rank being used towards this.  To allow clues to
play as guest, have a per IP database server side to recognize them as
clue as long as they have a character of rank X or higher that they have
played from that IP address.


> Once a player in newbie mode hits Lt. Cmdr., the client should
> automatically disable newbie mode as above. (Possibly a DI level
> between Lt. Cmdr and Commander as guest, since for guests Lt. Cmdr.
> seems too low and Commander seems too high.)
>
Server side.

> Thoughts? I'm especially open to ideas on things other than det own
> that can be removed from newbies' ships without hurting their
> learning, but which would frustrate experienced players enough to not
> play with (and thus abuse the info capabilities of newbie mode.)
>
Sending new info to the client, trusting client authors not to abuse
it and give that information to anyone using the client....no I don't
think that's the way to go.
Bill