Player onboarding - I need your help

Hi everyone,

When I set out to make this game, the first person who I wanted to enjoy the game was me. I took some of my favorite aspects of other games and brought them together, but I have greatly underestimated how unfamiliar they can be. As a lifelong player of aRPGs, and have hundreds if not thousands of hours spread between Factorio/strategy/automation games and more economic games like Eve Online, a lot of the things I take for granted are not at all comprehensible to others.

One of the most consistent pieces of feedback for Space War Economy Idle is there is a sometimes overwhelming sense of confusion on what things do and mean. My first attempt was setting up the help system with the ? buttons interspersed in various menus. My second attempt was the objective system. But still, the feedback remains.

So I will be moving forward with a third attempt which consists of

• An encyclopedia-type system that explains almost every term in the game
• The beginnings of a narrative element (which was planned for later) to orient the player

I recognize this might not enough - I've tried twice and still seem to be failing. So I'm asking: Besides bug fixes and re-labels, how else can I onboard the player better? Another option is to re-do the objectives and draw them out, breaking things down step by step, but from what I've gathered, the majority of players seem to step through it just fine (and quickly).

While I work on this third attempt, I'd love to hear your feedback and ideas on how I can do this better. Thanks!