Given that the question is about atracting new players to the game there is no question that the first options would help.
Falcon 3.0 had a mode that allowed you to fly around and blow things up without ever getting hurt. This was a great help in getting you to learn how to fly, fight and play. It did get boring very quickly, but then you would start increasing the difficulty options (usually after going to some of the flight-sim boards and hearing how rewarding a "real" kill could be) until you developed some skills in the game.
The problem is that there are no "learner" sub-sims around. Prior to Falcon 3.0 most (if not all) flightsims were very simple affairs with the accent on gameplay and player rewards and not on fidelity. This allowed the hobby to develop a large following before the level of diffulty got increased to the level it is today.
With a new Subsim coming out every 2-3 years people just have to jump in and hope for the best. It must be very frustrating for new players.
As far as the in- game manual goes it would be better to have a voice over video instruction video included with the game as well as a printed tutorial (using screen shots from the video). It would not be that hard to do.
JCC
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