8 hours, menu tour.
Alright, I'm starting to get everything straightened out. There isn't a lot I can do about the recapture of the player into the menus after their first save. Right now it is like 4 progress bars into a hard cut which is mad ugly. The advancements there need me to get my art on and that's not where I want my time right now.
So I've roughed out the menu tour progression instead. After getting into the menu I am using the header text to issue guidance text which is weird but I kinda like it. Added a progress bar for guidance purposes. Data is loaded, the player clicks it to send it in, they hover over each button so they see the data display but we don't make them interact and then have them boot into practice mode. Next I'll pace out some chat time with the player on first practice run.
Tweaking and playing around with what is visible and whats how aggressively throwing error messages at the player as they hit the first two menus. I'm deciding to lean out of aesthetic choices for moment, just making things white and black for the time being.
The player should be ungrabbable when in a launch state.