Harder than expected

[dense ledge]

3 of us jumped on tonight for the very first time to try the game and without a full tutorial it was a little hard to work out where all the stations were etc, but we did manage it in the end (I think).

Our main issue is it feels very much - at this super early 1st ever mission stage - to be harder than it needs to be. Unless we were piloting we felt like we were just running back and forth between fires and emergencies...not getting much else done.

Yes it is a skill issue and I am sure we will get better as will our ship, but it would be nice to have a couple of initial group training missions with only 2-3 enemies and only a couple of emergencies so you can learn how to diffuse situations without blowing up. (Yes we have blown up already).

Otherwise we love so many things already like the gravity, pulls to other ships, graphics etc - it is a lot of fun, we are just older, non super speedy reflexes and would just like to fly around and explore sometimes without imminent death on our minds every time.

[fervent sinew]

The prologue/tutorial does exactly this

[dense ledge]

Interesting, we must have played a different prologue/tutorial.

[tough turret]

The difficult definitely ramps with more players, but there's also individual difficulty levels

[round ivy]

We found some of the "mini game" repairs were not obvious, in the prologue you get the repair a fuel line which was ok, but in a 3 player game we had a nuke containment breach with no tutorial, the rods kill you quite quickly if you don't know what your doing

[tough turret]

Yeah, that was rough the first time

[round ivy]

I like that some events only trigger if you have enough crew to deal with them, sorting the fuel rods if it was just me and BU-D3 would be painful

[dense ledge]

I didn’t have to repair anything in my tutorial before jumping in with my friends.

So was at a complete loss when anything happened on our ship.

We spent too long trying to figure out how to do the mini games and find fire extinguishers or even how to clear the materia things on the ship.

The game is whack-a-mole in a spaceship.

[dreamy pendant]

You got to the ship and it was instantly ready to take off ? odd

though I agree that the tutorial could be a little more thorough, through like you said, optional tutorial missions

[tidal terrace]

Roll with the punches and don't expect to understand perfectly on your first try. Isn't it awesome to learn as u go? It gives prompts and the 1.0 difficulty is incredibly forgiving. We've become needy as gamers, mario kart never came with a tutorial nor did final fantasy 1. You'll figure it out by playing, please don't let that fact prevent you from playing. I've watched far to many games die because they're "too difficult" turns out you're bad or just learning. Imagine if Jiminy hendrix picked up a guitar said "what no tutorial" and put it down.

[tidal musk]

If you didn't repair anything you didn't do the tutorial. The tutorial is you literally finding a derelict and getting it running.

[fervent sinew]

Did you actually play the prologue? That's what's it called in the menu, just FYI
I know some people jump in and go to Hangar immediately skipping the popup that says "we recommend the prologue because it's the tutorial" to play with their friends from the get go, maybe you missed that?

IIRC the prologue includes repairs, though I'm not sure if the fuel rod crisis pops up in it, I think it doesn't - that one's the less "taught" one, though picking up a rod does give you MASSIVE radiation visuals all over the screen and a big glowy orange icon in your inventory with a prompt to drop it with the relevant key if you need it, as well as an icon popping up telling you where the dissassembler is to throw it in
Other than a big text box appearing with bright lettering in all caps "THROW THIS THING IN THE DISSASSEMBLER" I'm not sure how clearer this could be

I have, at least, figured that one on the go instantly because of all the visuals

[lament parcel]

I have yet to see these cursed rods, but the VERY LAST place I would conceptually put those things is in a grinder... 😬

[round ivy]

2: things seal the containment breach first.
When you pick up anything that you need to put somewhere the somewhere glows but you need to look around

[primal oar]

My first time picking up the rod in the ship, I missed the icon for the disassembler because we had multiple fires, a component disabled, and had just been boarded. The icon got lost with all the others, so I just dropped out the launch tube and dropped it there.