Sortale - Tutorial mission text

AI Marshal Andes> Welcome commander. My instructions are to demonstrate for you the four principles of team operations. The principles are as follows - Expand, Raid, Don't Porc, Don't suicide!

Let us examine Private Nopan's operations. He is attempting to make units, but he has failed to immediately cap the metal spots nearby. Metal is required for units. Private Nopan DIDN'T EXPAND and capture mexes quickly! So now his team faces failure!

Nopan's base explodes to illustrate this point.

Next let us view Private Dairr. Her units are lazy and idle! The enemy can build up its economy without any threat. Idle units should be raiding and destroying the economy. But she DIDN'T RAID!!! Her enemies will win.

*Boom

Private Porky has spent his metal building a fortress. However a fortress poses no threat and controls few metal extractors! He will be overwhelmed by better economies that controlled more territory. He forget - DON'T PORC! And now he will die.

*While talking gradually more artillery attack Porky's base. Finally tac nuke boom!

Private Emmmo is trying to his team... but his efforts are suboptimal. He's sending his units one and a time to be killed, rather than using a group to overwhelm the enemy. Sending units to die one at a time simply gives your metal to the enemy. DON'T SEND UNITS TO SUICIDE. Private Emmo's efforts are wasted.

*Kaboom

To achieve team operational status, commander, please adopt optimum performance measures. Deploy your factory and start making units right away.

*Give factory and one LLT.

Raid as soon as you can.

*Give 5 glaives

Expand and capture metal spots!

*Give two constructor. Constructors begins to walk off

Do not waste metal on heavy defences in your start location.

*Nearby DDM self destruct
Do not waste your metal on unneccessary Caretakers and Storages!

*Blowup a line of excess Caretakers and storage, leaving one nano only.

And please do not suicide your units. You must apply this now to face three opponents, to prove your Team capabilities.

*Three enemy CAI and two ally CAI spawn
CAI says "Human Commander Ada identified! Destroy!"

...Good luck commander! And remember - expand, raid, don't porc, dont suicide!

EDIT> Text updated

This is not a good tutorial. :(

Saktoth more information required. Sortale and I agreed he will change it to suit before actual creation, so feedback is possible. For that matter you could propose or build your own mission too :)

Also just in case it wasn't obvious this designed to prepare very minimum skills for teams room by correcting the most common and balance-breaking mistakes, not teach micro or unit types.

EDIT> Whoa man I'm regretting the feedback thing. I take it back I don't want any of your feedback lol. :P

Make a comic or somesuch (text with pictures will do, actually) with this. Wall of text upfront is awful for a tutorial, or any kind of SP content for that matter.

quote: Wall of text upfront is awful for a tutorial, or any kind of SP content for that matter.

Sharing this view. Keep in mind that new players might want to just skip any sort of intro, ESPECIALLY when they got super duper excited and want to "PLAY RIGHT NOW AAAAH!" because ZK is looking too awesome.

Great work, guys!
A way to avoid an intro that is too long(which is really annoying if you fail and have to restart the mission, which will be the case for noobs), is to split the mission in different parts: expand, raid, no porc and keep units alive. Maybe separate mission, maybe one big tutorial mission.
It will make learning easier, as it goes step by step instead of throwing all the information at once.
For instance:
1) DONT PORC:
player has a place porced up, artillery wears down the heavy porc, then assaults com in to wreck it all. "blabla don't porc, make units instead"
--> give player some raiders/allow only glaives to be made in the fac
advice player to go around and kill arty, then surround and swarm the assaults (best i probably really assaulty assault, like a reaper or two)
2) RAID
cinematic: enemy keeps on pumping out units, among them are riots "omgz, enemy has eco advantage, don't attack riots, but raid"
--> higlight enemy mexes with mapmarks, enemy should have lots of naked expand, so raiding should be easy.
--> give player (ability to make) some skirmishers to counter riots (+assaults?) coming in
3) EXPAND
(not sure about this one)
give player some cons, "(...)you require more metal!(...)" higlight (juicy) mex spots

4) DONT SUICIDE/unit composition/... (again, not so sure about this one)
let the player wreck the enemy with hordes of units :)

You could put your original "Private ..." cinematics as bad examples in between.

When the mission is split in parts, it would be wise to make it possible to restart a 'round' after losing, instead of starting the whole mission all over again, similar to the super extreme kodachi rally.

Flipstip
You could be right. My first mission suggestion was more like that, but I want to quickly try this format which I think will be better once refined. We'll see if it sux or rulez :P

Is the intro affected by game speed? (+, -)
Skip could be triggered via Escape.
Pause might be useful too.

Thinking about it, all games ever need an interface similar to video/music players, with a bar, fast forward, pause, etc button. :)

Who the hell is field marshall andes? This is either story, in which case the story needs to be punchy and brief, or it should be tutorial, which should not be weighed down with fluff. You've just made a wall of text even textier.

You're trying to 'teach through showing', which is good, but you're just showing an NPC base that is doing something wrong and then blowing it up. This does not let the player experientially understand this issue.

The player is just flooded with a wall of instructions and told to 'do this'. But there is a VERY good chance in a 3v3 vs CAI's that they can porc and win, or let their allies make mexes and win, or to not raid at all and win, or just suicide in their units and win.

Better is to teach them how to fight against players using these tactics. Put them against a porcy enemy and make them go around to take out the eco, or kill it with artillery, or punch a hole with arty then go in and take out the eco to show net local superiority and teach both these lessons at once.

Put them against an enemy who does not raid, and put the player on a timer. Get the player to naked expand as fast as possible to prepare for a big attack.

Put the player against a naked expanding player, and force them to raid or lose the eco war.

Put the player against a shield ball that takes 0 attrition and slowly builds up, walking it's way down the map clearing out mexes, so the player can learn to engage all at once rather than piecemeal (But not so late that they've lost too many mexes and the enemy gets too much eco). Or put the player in a situation where they must contest for control of a wreck field, protect their cons and destroy the enemy cons, while not leaving too many units near the enemies side of the wreckfield (Where there are defenses or something to allow the player to over-commit and not be able to get at the reclaim).

Whether these are structured scenarios with your units already laid out or just broad AI behaviours on expanding vs not, they'll teach these lessons a hundred times better than by showing the player a movie and throwing the them into a 3v3 vs CAI's where they can just tek2det and ignore every lesson.

I can make that porcy mission!