Free Allegiance Forums

Add a basic scout with a training turret gun (emp type, 2k range, mostly harmless, uses no energy) as starting tech for all factions.

Why:

- New players would be able to do preview tours in live games.
- They would see more action than trying to catch up with the events and getting confused with the controls.
- They can talk with the trainer in the ship channel.
- Also they can blame the trainer for excessive deaths.
- Turrets tend to be fun, plus they have aiming reticles.
- They watch a more experienced scout flying around.

http://www.freeallegiance.org/FAW/index.php/Observing_games

Aside from the stuff listed there, there's two big problems. First of all, a no-damage turret weapon would be REALLY annoying, with the newbie tending to fire it and get you eyed, or (even if you make it a zero-sig weapon) just annoying you with constant firing noises. Secondly, we don't need more $#@!ing lessons on how to fly a scout. It's not that goddamn hard, and AFS is basically a glorified "How to fly a scout (and never fly anything besides a scout)" class anyway. What we need to teach newbies is situational awareness, something sitting in a turret won't provide.

actually i think this is a great idea. when i started, i had a hard time staying alive long enuf to learn what the vets were doing that was so effective. sometimes its not enough to sit in base and watch .. you have to be right there next to the action and understand things like distances to drop prox and timing for htting/bombing, etc. not having to worry about flying your ship while being able to observe up close.. gives you just that.

if this is the closest we can get to spectator mode, then i think this would go a long way towards giving newer players a useful tool... heck if this can work for ints, im sure a bunch of people would love to sit behind pico or weed and pick up some dogfighting techniques...

Wrong forum, should be in core development unless there's something you're not mentioning that requires a code change.

It's entirely possible to make a no-ammo, no-energy, no-particle, no-noise, no-sig, no-damage weapon for it so that's not an issue. I foresee 2 problems: Sitting in a turret not doing anything is pretty boring after a short while; and being in the turret means they can't be anywhere else and newbies are occasionally useful elsewhere, even if by chance.

What Turkey said.....
In addition

Whether they will learn anything is highly dependent on who's turret they drop on to. If they jump onto some voob who doesn't say much's turret they may not learn anythingThey may not understand much of what is happening - so it's not much of an improvement from that POV

Another problem is when podded the enemy gets 2 kills raising his KB higher than the one kill expected. So probably a code change nevertheless.
What's wrong with F3 viewing or observers?

well for me, it was insufficient to just watch from base... to fully appreciate whats going on, you really have to watch it 3d.

i guess another way to simulate spectator mode is if you put them in faster moving lifepods but it still wouldnt be as helpful as having them ride piggyback.

I thought the newb bus was a cooler idea.

We had a way to do so, they were called Observers (yes lil jimen, before your time of pessimism). A loophole was found and people began to use them as HAX. They go "bye bye".

There is a ship named Training Scout. Please see Tcore, but it's focus is more on cargo space and such.

As far as AFS being nothing but telling someone to fly a scout, after watching a huge percentage of the peeps here, they really should fly nothing but scouts....but instead....there they go in ints. *pop*

Situational awareness is not taught. `gh?

SpaceJunk wrote:QUOTE (SpaceJunk @ Mar 27 2010, 01:17 AM) Add a basic scout with

This would be a core change, not a code change (never thought I'd say that). Wrong forum!

QUOTE - New players would be able to do preview tours in live games.[/quote]
Problem with this is that they still count towards the total members on a team. And they're liable to try and do silly things like fly into the opposing team's red door, ram enemies, or try and shoot them (then complain it has no guns). IMO, even as an 'observer', it gives them the wrong idea about the game from the start.

QUOTE - They would see more action than trying to catch up with the events and getting confused with the controls.
- They can talk with the trainer in the ship channel.
- Also they can blame the trainer for excessive deaths. [/quote]
It sounds like you're asking for the training core, tbh.

Edit: If you don't know what the training core is, then this link is for you.