My take on the newbie experience.

I joined from Eve and signed up with NeX and so I am in a corp with 500 noobies and a few vets who are helping out.

When I first started the game I think I was deployed in a terminal area and I think I may have closed the tutorial that came up. I went and shot some drones that were nearby and eventually found the missions again and got cracking on them.

The missions.....boy were they frustrating. There are so many new people at that time all working their way through the rookie and tutorial missions that competition for spawns was high. Got them done though and tried to work out what to do next.

Decided that mining/picking probably wouldnt be worth it at low equip and skill levels. Had a look at the price of ammo compared to rewards from missions then started reading the forums for noobie money making tips.

COURIER MISSIONS - yay/puke

So, I read up on forums about these and set to work. The alts and the combat main learned how to drive a sequer and do a few extra missions. I ran the triangle until my eyes bled and made a lot of NIC compared to people doing combat missions from what I'm told.  Used money from this for market buy orders to start building stuff.

Manufacturing
Did some of this on an alt, buying mats off the market and selling finished goods on corp market at nice price for corpies. Te market is pretty erratic though so this is a fairly annoying process due to prices changing a lot.

Mining
Started having a look at this on an alt. Tried in an argano and just put it away after 5 mins. Got a termis, seems a bit better but I wasnt sure on the right thinking for equipping it. Im used to perma tanking rats when mining and was looking for setups that would work like that. Ended up going out with a termis and a castel to guard and then brining in a sequer to empty the can, didnt tank the miner in the end. Need more skill points before i can take a better look at that I think.

My first npc hunt
I got the skills for my waspish last night and went out to see what I could do with my paltry 600 EP in missile skills. I knew it was going to be tough as I spent all my EP on learning to drive a sequer and fitting skills etc so I bought a load of shiny gear to let me shoot further, rep faster and run like a scared little girl. I decided long rang kiting would be best so they would be less likely to web me and *** my noobie ***.

After failing to kill things in any reasonable timeframe on the rookie missions it was a pleasant surprise to see my 5 missiles ripping into enemies from over a hill. I had to do some running away but I survived and everything I shot at died. Some of those bots had webbers and drainers and they chased me really far from where the combat started, at one point I backed up into range of another group of missile slingers and I had to leggit. I need to learn the names/ranks of the rats so i know what to expect from them.

General comments thoughts
I love the skill system, being able to decide where to put the points after you have acquired them is really good.
Missiles own.
Bots are too small. A Heavy mech should be a building sized monsrosity capable of stomping on smaller bots and crushing them flat while laughing in a loud mechanical voice. OK maybe not but please put in some tiny cows that I can stomp to make me feel bigger.
I hear its coming but it needs mentioning AUTOPILOT. I want to be able to make a waypoint path and just set my bot moving along it. I can then monitor him while he moves and most importantly I will be able to spin the camera to look behind or next to me whilst still moving forward.
NEEDS MOAR CAMERA SPINNING!!
Loving it

LOL.

The effect of having bots is to imbalance the game in favour of the side that uses them. If both sides use them then there is no advantage, you just remove a chunk of the game that other people may enjoy. Why not just put credits in your account or get a new mech each time you login?

There is meant to be a cost to losing your stuff or getting better stuff, that cost is the time it takes you earn.

Wow, thanks for that guys.

I'm sure we will put all items to good use

Doh, should of checked the forums before I skived off work to clean out my GPU and do some more Perping.

Ah well, guess that stack of dirty dishes is gonna get some attention now....

Also: loving the game and happy to see such great dev involvment with your players.

/subbed 2 accounts.