We're all aware of the current situation with Astral.

At present, each glimmer of a node regains it 10% of the power it currently holds. When this is only a few links, this is clearly very, very slow.

I was speaking to Melanchthon earlier, and he came up with the bright idea of changing this glimmer to add 10% of the node's *maximum* power with each tick. A simple idea, I thought, but one which will be both effective at fixing the current problem, one which will remove the ability of the few to inconvenience the many to the extreme degree that they have been doing via this draining, and will make Astral in general a little easier to use.

The Astral plane was an important place, not just as a pastime, but also as a game mechanic - a method of regaining the experience lost in fighting. I'm aware that there are other high-level bashing spots, but nowhere quite fills in the 60-70s gap as Astral does.

While I am well aware that such an implementation should not be neccessary, given that the game is player-run and the situation player-caused, the nature of the node's refilling and the fact that there is no real way for any ban to be enforced on people linking make it, in my eyes, needed.

Please keep commentary constructive.

Astral was drained by players, and players can let it regenerate. Doing it your way(and it does not regenerate 10% of current, not sure where you heard that), would defeat the whole purpose of why it takes longer to regenerate when it's lower. Your way it would regenerate the same amount each time, and that's NOT what we wanted. Stop people from draining it until it regenerates farther.

Problem is that a single person can easily keep all nodes completely dead, and it only costs a few minutes time every day.

Hajamin, though I addressed this in my original post, I will re-iterate the salient point for you:

You cannot enforce any ban.

In five minutes with a cubix, anyone can zero the few links that a node has managed to regenerate.

I'm also curious as to what rate the recharging does occur at, if not 10% of current power per glimmer.

I don't see why we can't. It seems it bothers people from each city/commune that it is being drained like it is. Then each should set a temporary rule to keep it's members from draining. If anyone from their city is seen doing it they could be punished.

Do it yourself Ceres seriously, you could go up there and kill whoever you saw doing it but you'd rather come complain. Players screwed other players over. We have to un-screw ourselves.

I go up every once in a while to see if I can spot a person draining it and I have been ambushed by several of the creatures (I accidentally got to pisces. I hate those things.) Astral is not devoid of creatures.

I realize that a constant regeneration rate would make hunting towards Titan faster. I think, however, that there are really two main thrusts to the argument against how nodes work currently:

1) Keeping the nodes drained out is incredibly easier than getting them to that state, let alone letting them recover. I think Ceres' estimate of five minutes with a cubix to flatline astral is generous. The bottom end of node regeneration is too slow...perhaps a completely drained node can go 'dormant' and become unlinkable for months or so but come back with a measure of power.

2) There is a threshold number of astral hunters at which all the nodes will continually be kept at motes. Once this is reached, and I think we are nearly there, astral hunters will get very little individual benefit from visiting astral. It will be at a point where every node visited is moted...and inevitably nodes will be linked out again, putting us back where we are now.

It just honestly takes too long with the current mechanic, and is too easy to maintain. What right now is a problem that crops up every decade or so will eventually be a constant occurrence. This is good in some ways and bad in others, but in the end it leaves the largest block of active hunters, those from 60 to 80, with few places to go.

In many ways, Astral is too good at its best, and too bad at its worst. It just feels unbalanced.

All it takes is a gem, a cubix, and a few minutes to bypass anything like that...and unfortunately, the astral repop can support approximately 1 hunter.

Astral was fine before some players messed it up. You need to find out who keeps draining them, kick them out of their guild and city, enemy them, and hunt them. Whoever is draining them is seriously lessening their city/commune's ability to bash and they would be perfectly justified in punishing them severely.

I think the problem, as with harvesting, is the impossiblity of accountability. There is no way to tell who is draining the nodes. If there was a lastlinked skill in Planar, things would be different. You'd know who to track down. If it wasn't for cubixes, there might be a chance that people who were linking could be seen. But as is, it's impossible to tell who did the draining, and cubix-holding drainers can get out in seconds, with noone the wiser.

Make the rule 'anyone found on Astral will be assumed to be draining and will be severely punished'.

Have an exception to the rule, of course, where someone can go up for a bit, and peek around.

Of course, if the person doing this has a Gem of Cloaking then there's no way to stop them.

My vote is to take away all cubixes, and give a full refund. Those things are a pain anyways

Yeah...I'm not ticked at the fact that it's possible to do this, it's just the ease of maintaining it that rubs me all sorts of funny.

Agreed. The regeneration is simply too slow.

My solutions:
1: Add more bashing areas for that level range.
2: Vastly increase natural spawning of Astral creatures.
3: Add more bashing areas that people can actually get to.

I second this!

I hate items that let people escape just about anything, making them able to raid/be annoying and others not being able to do a thing about it. I wouldn't mind cubixes if they were a means of travel, not primarily a means of escape =\\

I suggested an artifact that could zap people with cubixes (along with other teleport/planar powers), temporarilly negating them. Maybe something along those lines needs to be developed.

I think Melanchthon mentioned something like this, but maybe you could really have a node go dormant the moment it's drained dead, then after so many real days, it wakes up at full power again.