You have just made a feeding ground for newb-killers. Nothing turns a player off of a game than being immediately killed by a much higher-level player.

True, but since you know where the noobs are you could also give that particular system particularly tight defenses at both whs, which would make sense since noobs start out at the captials. If someone did manage to get through then yes, there would be some havoc.

esromneb has an interesting idea: i.e. certain ships would not have wh jumping abilities. Perhaps the basic EC series would not come with a wh jump drive, so you would have to level up first. Would that seems less artificial, Arolte?

I only signed up about 4 days ago so I'm probably as newb as you get. I think the initial idea by phazerlight is the best suggestion in the thread. To recap: Once the player reached trade level 1 they would get a message saying something like "Congradulations... with your first trade license comes wormhole access privileges. You can now take inter-system trade missions and roam the universe at will!"

Anything higher than that would really, really suck. In my first free 8-hours (kudos to the devs for that, I hate having to buy an MMO just to find out whether they suck or not - being able to play for free was a big enticement for me) I got to combat level 1 and trade level 1. I was reading the wiki and found out about the race tracks... which I thought was really, really cool and so I figured I may as well take a look.

I ran into Unknown Player Node right outside the wormhole into Sedina and a rocket or two later and I was dead. It was great. I knew damn well that the run was risky. I was watching channel 100 and the general chatter was all along the lines of "Sedina B8 is bad" so I had a fair inkling that the rest of Sedina wouldn't be a safe place to visit.

As for this: One possibility would be to also keep players in their own nation space until Combat 3... That idea plain sucks. I only managed to reach combat level 3 a day after I bought the game so right away, you're taking away my ability to "explore" the universe before I decide to buy. Trade 1 is potentially a fantastic idea because I like how that ties in with a quest. Reach trade 1 and the message allowing access pops up. It's all pretty neat.

You could also go one step further and make a "warp / wormhole drive" that can only be bought at trade level 1. Without this drive, you can't jump. Ships would need an extra small/medium (why are there no medium ports, eh? Wouldn't large really just be for the capital ships?)/large port to accommodate this (or even a special "jump drive" port akin to the current battery port). Making it a port would also allow for the implementation of the "short-range fighter idea" and allow players to ignore the drive and instead equip an extra weapon (or perhaps a battery) in that port, so they can act as capital ship / station defense.

This might be a headache to implement, but it would make it easier to create designated "newbie" systems by ensuring that the nooblets didn't wander off into Grey Space or Big Scary Bot Land, at least not until they had some basic familiarity with the game.

Seriously, if they wander off into space, they should die. I did. I learnt something from it. Preventing any killing until you reach the magic level X is dumb. I know some of you have been playing this game for years so I know there are ships out there with loads better weapons than what I'm carting. If a newb doesn't realise that, they're a dumb one anyway and are still going to bother the crap out of you by doing dumb newbian things.