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Please read Freebooted: BB38: Designing the Future Experience for background on this crazy-arse thread.

The aim is to have all the text here in quotable format so interested players can suggest alterations to move from a dead, "text-book" approach to the NPE, to a richer more involving experience.

02: The Pilot Certification Course

How to request a mission from an agent

To begin your certification course, start a conversation with me - Aura - through the highlighted Agents tab of the station menu.

To speak with any agent, click the Start Conversation button in the agent's listing.

[ Image of Aura's agent entry ]

Click next when you've opened a conversation with me.

[ Conversation: "Covering the Basics" mission ]

How to accept a mission that has been offered

When you speak with an available agent, they will offer you a mission through the Agent Conversation window.

Click the Accept button on the Agent Conversation window to begin the certification course. You always need to accept a mission before you can carry it out.

[ Image of the Accept / Decline / Delay buttons in the Agent Conversation window ]

Click next when you've accepted the mission.

Closing windows when you're done with them

During this tutorial you are going to need to open a lot of windows, so go ahead and close those you are finished with. If at any point you wish to read the mission briefing again, information about any missions you've accepted or been offered can be found in the Mission Journal on the Neocom. You can double-click any mission entry to view the full details.

Click next when you've closed any unnecessary windows.

[ NB: doesn't suggest that the player closes the Agent Conversation window and reopen it, just to guide them through the process of returning to a mission briefing ]

How to undock from stations

When you undock for the first time you will enter space in your capsule. The capsule allows a specially trained pilot like you - a capsuleer - to control their ship by thought alone. Capsules also function as emergency escape vessels in case the starship they are piloting is destroyed.

[ Image of Undock button ] Now that you are ready to undock, you can exit the station by pressing the Undock button located at the bottom of the Neocom.

Click next when you've undocked from the station.

[ Pilot must undock and then manually advance the tutorial ]

04: Getting Your Bearings

Explaining the Overview
The other main tool for finding and interacting with nearby objects is the overview.

The overview is the list-style window you see on the right of your interface. This shows all the things in your immediate area, as well as important landmarks across your whole star system. By default it is sorted by distance, showing the closest items to you at the top of the list.

Click next when you're comfortable with the overview settings.

[ NB: overview settings? WTF are overview settings? ]

Inspecting the Selected Item panel

Clicking on an overview entry will show you that item in the Selected Item panel immediately above the overview. Here you can see a small image of the item you have selected, along with some brief information and a row of buttons representing common ways to interact with it.

Click next when you've inspected the Selected Item panel.

How to identify objects in space and on the overview by their icon

Every object in space has a special icon, known as a bracket. You can see these brackets in the leftmost column of the overview.

Each type of bracket represents a different type of object.

[ Image of broken squares bracket ] Broken squares are ships flown by capsuleer pilots like yourself.

[ Image of grey cross ] Crosses are those ships not flown by capsuleers. If they are red, you may shoot them.

[ Image of square ] Stations have a continuous square bracket.

Click next when you have familiarized yourself with brackets.

Using your warp drive to move around a star system

Now you've mastered your basic camera controls, you need to use your warp drive to travel to your mission objective.

To do this, locate the Agent Missions listing in the upper left corner of your screen, click on your current mission name (Covering the Basics), and then select the Warp to Location option.

This will engage your warp drive, a system that allows you to travel across star systems extremely quickly.

Click next when you've started to warp to your destination.

Left button to select, right button to bring up menus

Once you've landed at the mission location, I'm going to teach you a few more basic controls.

The left mouse button is used for selecting things, pressing buttons, dragging and dropping, and other command functions.

The right mouse button is used to bring up the contextual menus. The contextual menu gives you a list of options, which changes depending on what you right-click.

Click next when you are ready to learn how to board a starship.


[ NB: I missed the transition between 4 and 5 ]

07: Looting

Accessing the contents of a structure

You ship has the capability to access items from structures and the wrecks of destroyed ships.

To inspect a structure or wreck, right click it and select Open Cargo.

Click next when you've opened up the cargo window.

[ Cargo container is opened to reveal one item: "Freedom of Operation" ]

Looting contents of structures and wrecks

Every ship has a cargo hold, which you can use to carry items around with you.

To move the contents of a container in space - like the one you just opened - into your cargo hold, just click the Loot All button. This will move everything into your ship, and show you the contents of your cargo hold.

Click next when you've looted the items.

[ Clicking loot all loots the item, but there is no visual distinction between the window representing the container in space and the window representing the ship's cargohold ]

09: Training Skills

Learning about skills

Your reward for completing that mission was a new skill book.

These books are how you acquire new skills. Skills are learned by your character, and improving your skills will make you more powerful.

Click next when you're ready to read about training skills.

Learning about how skill training works

Skills need to be trained. This converts them from an item in the world into information in your head. Once a skill is in your head, you'll never lose it.

Every skill in your head has a level. When you first put a skill in your head, it has a level of zero, and provides no benefit. You can train skills to improve their level, to a maximum of level five.

Training happens in real time, even while you're not online. Once you start a skill training, it will train at a fixed rate until it finishes training to the next level.

Click next to begin basic skill training.

How to start training a skill

The skill you earned in the last mission is waiting for you in your Item Hangar. Let's start training it now!

Click the Inventory button on the Neocom. This will open your Inventory window. If you select your Item Hangar from the tree on the left of the Inventory window, you should be able to see your skill book inside.

Training the first level of a skill is very simple. Right-click on the skill book and select Train Now To Level 1. The book will disappear and the skill will be transferred into your head.

Click next when you've started training the skill.

More about skills

Most skills will give you a small bonus to a relevant attribute for every level you train.

Many ships, modules and other useful items require you to have trained one or more skills to a certain level: The more skills you train, the more options you unlock.

Click next when you've read this page.

11: Fitting Your Ship (Minmatar)

Opening the fitting service

You fit items to your ship by using the fitting service window. Open it now by pressing the highlighted button on the Neocom.

Every station offers various services, such as fitting, repairing and insuring your ship. All stations offer a fitting service, meaning you can dock at any station to re-fit your ship.

Click next when you've opened up the fitting service.

Receiving some new items and locating them in your hangar

You are now being given a weapon module and a repair module. They will be placed inside your Item Hangar within your Inventory.

Open your Inventory again, and select your Item Hangar.

Click next when you've found the items you were given.

Fitting modules to your ship

Every ship has three slot types where modules are fitted: high, medium and low power. Different types of modules fit into different slots on your ship, as indicated by their icons.

To install the weapon module, drag it from your Item Hangar to the center of the fitting service window, where your ship is displayed.

Repeat the process to fit the repair module, a Civilian Shield Booster.

[ Image of gatling autocannon fitted to a high slot ]

Click next when you've fitted both modules to your ship.

13: Weapons: Projectiles

Loading your weapon

Projectile weapons fire projectile ammo. A small stack of ammo has just been placed inside your ship's cargo. You should load it into your weapon now.

To do so, right-click the weapon module and select the option for the EMP S ammo you've been given. This will load a stack of small electromagnetic pulse ammo into your turret.

[ Image depicting the weapon module with the right-click menu visible, "EMP S [1,000]" selected ]

[ Pop-up appears pointing to the weapon module, which in my case was behind the tutorial window. The pop-up was pointing at the picture of the weapon module, which caught me out because I thought the tutorial had raised the weapon module to a layer on top of the tutorial window! LOL ]

Learning about different types of ammunition

Different types of ammunition will affect the range and damage of your weapon. You can see your current range and damage in the tooltip when you hover over a weapon. Once you're ready to proceed, use what you've learned to activate the Acceleration Gate and move on to the next area.

If you don't remember how to activate the Acceleration Gate, you should right click it and select Activate.

Click next when you've activated the Acceleration Gate.

15: Basic Combat

What to shoot at

When you enter the next area you'll be attacked by hostile ships, with red crosses as their brackets.

Anything that shows up as a red cross is a valid target andn will usually attack on sight.

Activate the acceleration gate when you're ready for combat.

Click next when you've activated the acceleration gate.

Destroying enemy ships

[ Bungee label appears, attached to the Bandit Saboteur, "Bandit Saboteur" / "This is an enemy ship (not as good as yours)" ]

Just like with the fuel depot, you need to target the ship and then activate your weapons.

Right-click the ship and select Target to lock on, then click on your weapon to activate it. Once you've destroyed the first one, a second will show up.

Click next when you've destroyed both comments.

17: Queuing Skills

Finding your skills in the Character Sheet

You probably noticed that your new skill finished training to level one during that last mission. This means that you're not training a skill right now, so you might as well start training some more levels!

To find your skills list, open your Character Sheet by clicking on your portrait on the Neocom.

On the left side of this window, you can see all the various sections of the Character Sheet. The one we're interested in is in Skills at the top, which should already be selected.

Click next when you've opened the Character Sheet and selected Skills.

Starting to train your frigate skills

In the main pane you can see a list of skill categories. Locate Spaceship Command and click it to expand that category and view all the skills in it.

You should be able to locate a Frigate skill for your race in this list. This is a useful skill to improve, so let's get it training! Right-click the Frigate skill and select Train Now To Level 3.

[ Image of portion of skill sheet showing Amarr Frigate with context menu visible, "Train Now to Level 3 (Takes 7h 19m 2s)" selected ]

Click next when you've started your skill training and the timer has started to count down.

Learning how to queue up additional skills

The skill you've started will take around seven hours to finish training to the next level. This might not be a convenient time to switch your training, so it's smart to queue up another level.

Right-click the same skill again and select Train After Current Queue. You should see an additional blue box in the skill's upper progress bar, showing that you've queued up Level 4 too.

Click next when you've got the skill queued up to Level 4.

19: Inside the Academy

Retrieving the mission objective from the Academy Office

[ Bungee label appears, connected to Gallente Academy Office ]

Congratulations, you've arrived at the academy and are nearly done with your basic training. Before you start inspecting the fleet on display here, you should go and retrieve your Pilot Certification Documents.

[ Image of container bracket ] They are located within the small Academy Office nearby. You should be able to see it on the overview.

Remember: To loot from the structure you need to select it, open the container using the button in Selected Item, and then click Loot All.

Click next when you've successfully looted the certificate into your cargo.

Ordering the camera to focus on other objects in space

Let's take a moment and learn how to look more closely at your surroundings.

You should notice that there are a number of ships on display at the academy. You can view them all more closely by using the Look At function, which will focus the camera on any nearby item that you've selected.

To look at a ship or other object in space, select it, and use the Look At button in Selected Item, which looks like an eye.

When you want to return the camera's focus to your ship, you can use the Reset Camera button to the left of your HUD.

Click next when you've had a look around and then reset your camera.

Using Show Info to find more information

You can easily retrieve basic information about anything you see. To do this, right-click something and select Show Info.

Try it now on one of the ships you see. The information window gives you a detailed description of the ship and its role - invaluable information for a capsuleer just starting out.

Click next when you've looked at the info on a few ships.

Using Show Info elsewhere in the interface

[ Image of the information icon: blue circle with white "i" ] Anywhere you see this i button in your interface, you can click it to open the info window for that item, organisation or location. The information you get will vary depending on what you're querying. This is the standard way to find out more about things you're interested in.

Once you are finished looking at the ships, you should return to me to complete your basic training.

Click next when you're ready to return to base and complete your mission.