Push the tutorial to pre-crash

This was requested here: https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/53522-oversimplification so reposting comment to its own thread. (updated)

I know you guys (Keen) put a lot of time into the tutorial aspect of the start of the game with the cutscenes, voice acting and the like, but I think a solution to encouraging and teaching new players vs. empowering existing players to go create is sitting right in front of us.

Push the tutorial and early game challenges back in time to the trip to the Almagest system.

In this case, you create guided scenarios and walkthroughs and challenges (that may still be fun to do, perhaps a few random events so it's not always the same). A part's broken on the ship, you need to go out in space and mine a nearby asteroid and make a new part (teaching the production chain), you need to get fuel, take the mining shuttle and go harvest ice, etc, etc. As one commenter on a previous thread added, you're operating in an environment where you have access to a full production capacity, and can guide players through how to use them to overcome various challenges.

Along the way, these missions would provide the guidance and skills needed to teach the new player how to engineer in space. Solve a problem, go back into cryo sleep, perhaps get prompted with a choice to skip ahead to Almagest or more minigames, repeat. When you arrive and crash in Almagest, the training and hand holding should be over. You're in a crisis (the game) at this point and the handholding and freebies should stop. Dialogue between your space buddy and brother can guide you through your next goal, but at that point you have to figure out how to get that goal done on your own. (note, I would let you chose your space buddy during the tutorial, and make it a brother/sister combo, yes it doubles your voice acting, but also likely increases potential new player draw)

The point being that the game starts with a 'crisis' but currently everything is so oversimplified that it quickly feels like 'not much of a crisis' and in fact as it stands now your character even seems to forget it's a crisis as he single handedly goes off to colonize Almagest despite his injured brother and trapped cryo colonists on a potentially failing ship.

New players trying to figure things out can learn how to do that before the real crisis starts, so that figuring out how to solve the crisis actually feels like an accomplishment vs. just being walked through how to solve it.

The other advantage to this is that you can allow players to go through a tutorial and then decide how difficult they want their starting experience to be. What if I want to crash on Kemik, or one of the moons, or on Byblos, or wherever. If the tutorial is pre-crash then you can pick any spot to start, and only minor adjustments to the colony missions would be required (so you don't get the starter platform if you get to vallation later on instead of right away.