Belisarius wrote:No, for me the real "noob-killer" in the game is the enforced crawling around in a blind and substandard ship which is not learning but just bringing the gameplay dynamic to a crashing halt just to make the player feel truly insignificant.
I would respectfully disagree with your assessment of the Cobra III. In fact, it is arguably the best ship in the original set (OXP ships obviously notwithstanding). And it
has to be, because in the original Elite you could not switch your ship. You had to stick with the Cobra III from the beginning till the very end, thus it had to be good enough to persevere against anything the game could throw at you.
However, you're also right. Only a fully kitted out Cobra III is really the best ship out there. But when you get your ship, it is still completely unequipped with anything but the most basic systems. Thus it feels a lot weaker than it will later be.
The important insight that you give to us from your beginner's perspective is that for a pilot in a basic Cobra III there is effectively no choice in career paths. Shooting asteroids with a pulse laser is not worth the while (mining isn't even an option, because you don't have scoops yet), and parcel delivery doesn't pay enough. So, the standard early career path is small scale trading in those commodities with the highest profit margin: furs and liqueurs from agrarian to industrial systems, and computer and machinery the other way round. Only that you still have to find out what the most profitable (legal!) commodities are at this point. A tutorial would at least help the new player with that. In fact, there is a tutorial that does just that in form of [wiki]Mr Gimlet[/wiki], the helpful dock master of Lave station. It isn't an in-game tutorial, however. Maybe it could be converted into one.
With doing what we call "milk-runs" (trading computers and furs between rich industrial and poor agricultural systems), you'll find yourself with a couple of hundred credits after a couple of runs, and can begin to upgrade your ship. Once you can completely fill your hold and have enough cash left for buying some equipment for the first time, you've effectively made it. From this point on progress becomes much faster. You can afford another piece of valuable equipment almost after each return trip (assuming you buy your equipment in the rich industrial system, which will tend to also have a higher tech level, and therefore more equipment items available). One of your first upgrades should be the Large Cargo Bay, because increasing your cargo capacity automatically boosts your profits per run as well.
This would be the classic route for a beginner. There are really no viable alternatives to it, apart from selling your ship, buying a weaker one, and using the spare money to equip it better. I agree that in a game whose unique selling proposition is that it offers the player total freedom of choice, the effective lack of choice at the very beginning is a weakness.
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