3. Transnewtonian start would be easiest.

For me conventional start was easier. When I started a normal TN game I ended up not knowing what to use various technologies for and if I left ship design to the computer, I ended up not understanding why the ship existed in a particular form and how to use it. Conventional start may seem more difficult but it allows a new player to better ease into using the technologies to design a ship. Not a good one, but at least one that the player knows how to use.

Some AARs are not fictionalized much, if at all. So the Aurora fiction forum is good. If you are uncomfortable with that, then Aurora Chat. Or if you go with a more tutorial bent (explaining hotkeys used, menus, etc.) then I'd say Academy.

I second everything Sematary said.

I think it would be a great idea to chronicle a new player's confusion. It could give the rest of us a reminder of what it was like to struggle through the beginnings of the learning curve, which would help in dispensing comprehensible advice to other rookies.

Hey there, I'm a new(ish) player.  I've poked at this game on and off over the years but never really gotten beyond the various tutorials out there because I've not until recently had a monitor big enough to comfortably play the game in, and while I actually rather like the interface to this game, that just made it too hard to use.

Now I have a big enough monitor, and reminded I have this game by quill18's recently starting a lets play I was thinking of doing a text playthrough on the forum, focusing on the new player experience.  I'm not really looking to do a story, but more focus on my attempts at strategic thought while learning the mechanics and interface.  Part of the idea would hopefully be that I could highlight issues I had trying to work out how to do something or having something outright fail and then more experienced players could comment on stuff, both to help me then and there and as something other new players in the future could read through and learn about problems they are likely to encounter, and also perhaps provide a source of highlighting what aspects of the game can be particularly difficult to get your head around.

So, some questions

• Do you think this is a good idea? Would people benefit from it or would it just cause a lot of clutter
• Where should I put this if I do it? Here in the academy, or down in the story section? Again I'm not intending to focus on telling a story, and don't really imagine I'd poke around at all with the SM tools making a good story seems to require, at least not until I'm far more comfortable with the game as a whole
• Anything in particular you would suggest or like to see from a playthrough like this?