Quitch wrote:
I'd say every Mentor, at the very least, needs to kick off the game with a message to break the ice. Without communication there's really no point to a mentor game.
I agree, noobs need to feel like they're playing against a real person who wants to help them, not a faceless elite who will inevitably decimate them.
I also think that there should be some more advanced tutorials added to help noobs learn more basic and advanced rules and tactics. Tiger wrote a great strategy guide, and it'd be great if some of that were made into interactive tutorials. A few tutorials that would have really helped me out in the beginning would be:
1) When/where/how to use transports and tanks. The rules weren't clear to me at first, why some units (tanks/bots) could load onto a transport and unload in the same turn, while others (rockets/LAVs) couldn't. I think I remember that the tutorial said something about this in the Ant stage, but the rules weren't very clear to me.
2) World War tutorial: I thought that the rules about disclosures, guerillas, and indemnity weren't fully explained in the tutorials. It would be helpful to have a scripted World War simulation on Emerald (maybe just 5 turns) that goes over these rules with new players so they know what to expect.
3) Advanced land/naval transport tactics: How to use fast moving units in an offensive strategy, tanks/bot/transport combo on land to take out a few tanks, and 4 amphs/transports in the sea to take out a battleship or other targets. Also, how terrain can help/hinder such tactics.
4) Advanced bomber/artillary defense: The bomber tutorial is pretty good, but it would be helpful to see this in combination with rocket launchers, and guerillas, facing an enemy using tanks/transport/bots.
These are a few things that I've picked up along the way, and that I've taught to the relative noobs I've played, and it's helped their games a lot, which, in turn, increases their enjoyment because they aren't crushed so badly in the future.