Below is a comprehensive guide to recruiting new players, involving nation members, nation projects, and general play guide for those who are bored/looking for motivation.
The first thing to understand about recruiting new players, is that it is hard. There are very few noobs to go around on HE, and even fewer that stay. This guide aims to help fix that, while also teach you how to be effective at bringing new players in, and retaining them.
Some good rules to live by:
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DO NOT MASS RECRUIT. Ultimately, this is the downfall and biggest misconception I see about people thinking they are succeeding at recruitment, just inviting every noob into your nation and not giving them the proper attention and guidance they need will result in them quitting a majority of the time.
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Make a compelling recruitment post. This is where you feature dump. Talk about what your nation offers, what you offer, what makes your nation different? You are competing with other nations for recruiting the small pool of new players, make sure you set yourself apart. Example:
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Be direct, but not overbearing. This takes a bit of intuition, but don’t push yourself or nation onto new players, not everyone even wants to join a nation. It’s acceptable to be aggressive with your recruiting strategy, but don’t ever keep pushing someone who obviously doesn’t want to join.
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Keep a short memory. Don't get attached to what you don’t have, if you invest time and resources into recruiting someone and they instead join someone else, that’s ok. Throwing a fit or being upset about that is a waste of time, as this might hinder your other recruitment efforts.
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Diversify the channels in which you recruit. While posting a recruitment post is a good start, you should be proactive at recruiting as well. Reach out to friends from other games to invite them into Horizon’s End, privately message noobs in game, reach out to someone you’re friends with in-game to see if they’d be interested in joining up.
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Don’t recruit before you’re ready. This is a huge problem for HE, and something I see all the time. Noobs take care, infrastructure, and involvement, make sure you have a baseline of these things so that players aren’t hung out to dry as soon as they join.
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Discord. Make sure that your discord has ample and correct roles, make it inviting, and be active in it. Foster that community that everyone so-desires.
- SRP Program - A great advertising tool, SRP’s are a “ship replacement program”. Most larger nations have absolutely no issue covering the cost of a new player shuttle, create parameters around your SRP if needed, I.E: (Join Vega today! Our SRP will cover up to 95% of your ships material and credit cost, spend less time printing and more time playing!)
- Stockpile of printed ships for noobs - Goes hand in hand with a SRP program, you should print out a TON of smaller warships/miners for your noobs to hop into right when they join your nation, this way they can get a cool ship right off the back if they don’t feel like making their own, and it's a direct upgrade to whatever they’re flying (most likely).
- Free printing for noob ships - Again a great tool for advertising, if someone who joins your nation is looking to make their first ship, let them make the hull and then do a once-over to help them with shields, weapons, cost (sometimes noobs make ships out of full iron blocks),offer to paint it for them if they’d like, then teach them how to print or just print it for them.
- Consistent Nation Paint Scheme - For your ships, create a paint job. Try and have your entire fleet have some consistency between colors in some capacity.
- Existing infrastructure with essentials - Basic factories for printing, item chargers, power furnaces, pipe hookups with your mining ships, all available to your noobs. Teach them how to use this and show the connectivity between your fleet and your base.
- Cryopod area - Make sure a noob set’s their cryopod up immediately at your base, the last thing you want is for them to get sent to spawn and have to re-navigate back to your home.
- Gear them - Put them in power armor and give them a rifle, you’re increasing their chance of survivability for the cost of very little
- Asterii Presence - If you’re going to be recruiting noobs, setup stations or a settlement in Illius or Asterii with ships, gear, power, etc. This goes a long way, if you recruit a noob and live on the far side of Ilios, chances of them quitting or dying before they make it to your base raise significantly, as do the chances of them arriving and feeling “what now?”.
- Nation Bank - A centralized resource area and your nation balance, you and all of your teammates should be contributing to this as a “fund” for nation projects, instead of trying to piecemeal from settlements whenever you need something, you’d already have a fund to dig into. This is how the most successful nations operate and goes back to “team gameplay”
- Nation Buyback Program - Outside of percentages donated to the nation, also offer a way for noobs to convert their materials into credits by selling you their loot at a discounted rate, then taking this and selling it on the bazaar. Noobs get instant cash, nation gets profit over time.
- Outposts in every sector - At the very least a space station with some gear/power for noobs to park at if needed, even better is an established base/settlement in each
GIVE YOUR NOOBS OPTIONS FOR THINGS TO DO. BE INVOLVED WITH WHAT THEY WANT TO DO. EXPLAIN WHAT YOUR NATION IS AND WHAT YOU DO. I CANNOT EXPRESS HOW CRUCIAL THIS IS, DO NOT INVITE NOOBS INTO YOUR NATION AND JUST LEAVE THEM TO DO THEIR OWN THING UNLESS THEY STATE THAT’S WHAT THEY WANT.
The key is to be doing as MANY of these as possible, so when a noob joins and says, “what now?” you can say, hey we’re doing this, that, there and they can have a choice of what to do.
- Setup a massive farm to utilize profits at the prometheus eco station in Sirius. Make a 12k freighter to haul to your farm, a fun team activity and a great way to make money for the nbal and your noobs alike. You’ll need to send your group on resource missions and together, design and build the farm in creative before printing in on survival
- Mining. Group mining is a great social activity, Get as many folks as you can together and venture into the trench, or mine in the safety of near planets. Teach noobs about asteroids, teach noobs how mining lasers work, and again contribute some profits to the nation bank.
- Establish a large resource goal for your nation bank. (5 dubs of xyz resource for example), reward those who contribute the most to that goal. Ensure your noobs are getting some sort of compensation for their efforts, think of it as like a corp buyback program.
- AI Hunting. Super lucrative team gameplay stick your noobs in some gunships and take a larger ship out to go and conquer AI as a nation. A great learning opportunity and damn cool to see fleets work together to defeat a common enemy. You can outfit a noob or two with miners for a salvage team to follow alongside your convoy and clean up wrecks.
- Outpost setup: If you don’t have outposts in every sector, task your noobs and work alongside them to get things setup on a new planet, or even in space. Not a long or even hard task, but essential
- Trading Convoy: Take all of your noobs in transports that you provide, (remember, SRP) and work together alongside a trade route. Maybe shoot some AI along the way, potentially boring but again, foster a community and anything is fun.
- Resource gathering. Whatever you need, task a noob to go grab it for you, make sure you explain what it’s being used for, show them how it's being used after they get it for you.
- Building a base. Make sure you are always expanding on something, whether it be a base, a city, a space station, have an area for noobs to come in and be able to build something of their own in some fashion. Involve them in these processes
- Invest in Gas production. Gas production is becoming increasingly important with hydrogen/oxygen having massive implications and usages in SC industry, while also being good for power. Take noobs to planets with you to setup your gas
- Print things, ships, bases, buildings, factories, everything.
- Create a large power furnace array that connects to your mining fleet, connect this to your “nation bank”.
- Create a large chest storage area and autosorter
- Work on creating a large space station together
- Invest in SC industry, sell the items for profit for the nation bank
- Space arena training program. Show noobs how to use the ships you own, easy introduction into combat.
- Take a mining fleet to AU and look for Tier 3 Wrecks (these are full of valuable resources)
- Teach noobs about the value of decomposing wrecks/ships/territory, terraform some parts of your area.
- Introduce noobs to the server’s politics, teach them your nation’s stance politically, discuss other nations, and show how dynamic our politics can be
- When you feel ready, try some Player vs Player combat, engage in war-games with allied nations if you’re afraid or do not want to go to war. Simulate survival combat against one another over a station siege
- Capture siege stations either by negotiating to buy them or taking them by force.
- Setup a bookmark list with in-game commands, teach noobs how to use /route and /bookmark
- Settlement investment program, if a noob wants to go off on their own and make a settlement for the nation, invest in it with resources and credits from the nation bank.
- Design new ships often, it’s a fun experience and shows noobs how things work.
- Work on creating a trade city
- Daily commissions group, group up together and do your daily’s together, contribute a portion to the nation bank.
- Sell things on the bazaar, make competitive prices at all bazaars to stimulate the economy. Utilize the trade channel and political channels to encourage buying
- Escort fleet. Have something valuable that needs to be moved across systems? Put your noobs in some fighters or even have them pilot the valuable and move it together.
- Group Planet mining, albeit not as strong as it was, teach this to noobs as a safety net option for those who are afraid to go into space
- Fleet combat. Again for those not looking to get into a war, simulate war games in survival with allied nations, fight to the death and clean up the wrecks together as a group.
- If it pertains to you, teach them piracy, show them how ships work and set them loose. With a SRP, they shouldn’t have anything to fear
(Running List)
In conclusion and to reiterate, these are just some of the ideas of things you can do in Horizon’s End. Overall, there are infinite things to do because this game is self driven. In an effort to help your nation retain members, and to help server retention, give recruits the options to join projects that you are working on as a team. Invest in your players, “water where the grass is”, if you get a recruit or two you should be communicating actively with them in nation chat, in discord, in game. Invest in your players and they will then invest in the server.