You've now had some time to experience ships. As promised, before we finalize the design of the Aethercraft specializations, I want to canvas your opinions and get your input. I'm interested in constructive feedback and new ideas. The goal is for ships to have crews that must learn to work well together. Note that power is the ship's 'personal power' (just like a character's personal power) except that it is shared by all modules. Please don't assume that I remember your ideas on other threads, go ahead and repeat them here.

BTW, I know it's not obvious what some of these skills might do, but go ahead and give it your best guess. (Who knows, I may like your idea better!)

So have at it!

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Commander Skill List

You have gained the following abilities in Commander:
Command          Decrease balance of command module
Distribution     Distribute extra power to modules
Trail            Follow a ship without its permission
Spinning         Spin the ship to help prevent ramming (POWER 3)
Shadow           Prevent a ship from moving away
Maneuver         Maneuver past a shadowing ship
Bamf             Teleport ship to buoy or synchronized ship (POWER 10)
Rolling          Roll your ship to decrease chance to be hit (POWER 3)
Block            Block entrance to a dock or rift
Evade            Break away from a trailing ship (POWER 1)
Spiral           Prevent all hits for a limited time (POWER 10)

Combateer Skill List

You have gained the following abilities in Combateer:
Turret           Decrease balance of battle turret
Strip            Temporarily strip a shield (POWER 3)
Repulse          Push away a ship or aetherbeast
Murkle           Disrupt one module on an enemy ship (POWER 1)
Sludge           Temporarily slow movement of a ship
Worble           Cause aeon-like effect on one module (POWER 1)
Siphon           Siphon energy from a shieldless enemy ship
Marmuckle        Disrupt all modules on enemy ship (POWER 5)
Shock            Briefly paralyze ship or aetherbeast
Marwurble        Cause aeon-like effect on all modules (POWER 5)
Ultraviolet      Blow up modules on enemy ship (POWER 10)

Empath Skill List

You have gained the following abilities in Empath:
Grid             Decrease balance of empathic grid
Analyze          Analyze other ships or aetherbeasts
Channel          Hail another ship and open a channel
Clarity          Unfreeze any module or clear an ailment
Scan             Find all non-cloaked ships in same environment
Flare            Send a signal to all nearby empaths (POWER 3)
Static           Block communication in a 9 room radius (POWER 3)
Buoy             Drop a temporary buoy in aetherspace (POWER 10)
Feedback         Damage ships who try to hail you
Synchronize      Synchronize two ships to always stay in touch
Regenerate       Regenerate blown up modules (POWER 5)
Powersurge       Clear all ship ailments (POWER 10)
Recovery         Escape death and recover ship at home dock (POWER *special*)

I love the Combateer stuff.

Those are all excellent! I love them! I was afraid the skillsets were going to be bulky and unwieldy, but they're short and sweet. Fantastic!

"Ensign, please open a channel to the fereng- er, Richter's ship."

For the commanders. How about a high level skill that allows them to know which direction the closest docking area is that they have been too before.


Just to help aid in not being completely lost.


PILOT REPORT

(Ship) Starfall haven says. "The closest dock is on The facility. Please proceed to the northwest."

I thought I'd add things for Combateer but I honestly can't since you nailed everything I had thought of already.

In addition to the idea I posted above. There could be a command. When you have reached a docking bay.

you can PILOT RECORD


(Ship): Starfall Haven says. "Coordinates to The Facility have been recorded."

This is so that you can confirm you have been to this place before.

This way you could then while you are in the middle of of no where

PILOT REPORT


(Ship): "The closest recorded dock is on The facility. Please proceed to the northwest."

Might want to change the name of the "Bamf" skill. Otherwise I'm going to be forced to listen to Dane Cook whenever I pilot a ship

Only other thing I can think of is a power ability in Commander to increase movement speed for a bit.

Doesn't the very first skill in the specialization increase speed permantly, by shortening the balance on the command chair?

I like the ideas, but a few comments:

Blowing up modules - does that effect Empathy? If so, how do you repair the empathy module?

There should be more ailments besides the aeon-like one. Maybe module specific ones, to decrease turret accuracy, make pilots sometimes steer the wrong way, make empaths fail to heal, make energy collectors sometime backwash energy the wrong way when siphoning from ship to ship, etc.

I still think combateers should be able to lay aethermines, similar to empaths laying buoys. They last the same time, and their effect is to explode when a ship enters the 'room' and deal damage to that ship. Only one can be in the room at a time. Doesn't effect leaving the room, so you can't hit yourself. Empaths then could have a skill to sense if there are mines in the region, and Commanders could have a skill to move very slowly but ignore mines, or disarm a mine in an adjacent square (costs a power to disarm all mines around you, and you lose the power even if there are no mines there).

What about a skill in Commander to get absolute coordinates? I know many of us have coded coordinate sytems, but some people don't use clients that let them do such things - it is so absurdly useful to know where you are. The coordinate system that everyone I know uses is 0,0 is the aetherplex or the rift to the aetherways, north and east are the positive axes.

How about a Commander skill to briefly extend scanning range? Costs power and displays the map with greatly increased range, once - even more if the ship has the antenna artifact.

Does STATIC effect intership communications, or intraship communications, or both? How about a targetted version as well that blocked intraship communcations on a target vessel if their shields were down?

If Empaths can make a ship recover at the "home dock" the Commander should be able to change the Home Dock with a skill. Maybe limit it to docks with nexuses? Must be done while docked, so you have to be connected there.

How about a combateer skill that allows ranged targetting?

OMFG what tottally awesome ideas!

I like most of them, but I also would like to make a few comments that are -only- my opinion. And hence I expect to get flamed.

1.) I don't really like the sound of Recovery... ship crews can already sip vitae (if they can't conglutinate) and be assured of a single vitae death. The collectors on board a ship are not damaged in an implosion, which means only all the ships power reserves are lost. I think that these costs for death are already just significant enough to be effective, without being too costly or prohibitive. If we introduce skills where ships and crew suffer nothing at all, there won't be much point in engaging in ship-to-ship combat.

As an alternative, how about being able to temporily boost hull strength or ship speed, at the cost of the Empath's own body/mind? Or maybe something about linking with another ship in an armada to gain individual benefits that are more than the sum of both vessels stats?

2.) I really think it would be helpful for short flights if commanders were given some sort of ability to send single simple commands through the other modules infrequently. As in, if they have a certain skill in Commandeering, they can GRID REPAIR HULL from the command chair if the Empath station is empty, but it will cost them twice the normal balance recovery, and they can't do it again for a few minutes.

3.) A further empath ability to make up for Recovery might be cool if there was a way to communicate with aetherbeasts. Commanders can make the ship immune to them, Combateers can repulse or freeze them, Empaths should also have something to do in PvE. What if for a powercost the Empath was able to engage in something akin to an influence battle with a certain aethermonster (requiring the ship to stay in the same room until it is complete)? If successful, the aethermonster might give up some kind of treasure that the combateers can pick up somehow, or maybe it can be convinced to mate with the ship (bear with me!) and deposit eggs inside, and these can be stored and deployed later by combateers and used almost like mines.

4.) Another empath ability that would be great (or even combateer) is being able to tell how many aethermonsters are in a single '!'. Also, how many in the local region that are tracking the vessel. What about abilities to camouflage the ship temporarily to a certain type of aethercreature, which slow the ship down in order to maintain the illusion. This would become especially balancing if things are not changed, as it is possible for a single quick vessel to attract hundreds of aethercreatures into orbit around them, and flying past another ship or dock with this entourage would be devastating, requiring no actual skill on the captain's part.

Hmm. That's my thoughts for now!

Commander skill: Slip. Takes a list of directions and moves the ship instantly in those directions at no balance loss. Does not require balance to use. Costs 2 POWER per room moved.

Ooo, hell yes. That needs to be fixed if its not meant to be that way.

I actually think it would be really cool if the number of people aboard could be a benefit somewhere besides when ramming. Maybe an emapth skill that distributes damage taken to everyone interlinked to the ship's empathic grid? Like, prevents 30 damage per person, and those people take psychic hits of 700 damage?

Distribute - I don't really understand how this would work, when all the modules share power. Does it make the module think it has extra power, increasing it on the prompt for just that module?

The gnomes used powerstones to power their ship. Why can't we?

More possible abilities:

- Empaths able to set the 'antibodies' of an algontherine entity on a particular intruder, causing effects akin to planar damage as electrical discharges, or tendrils of energy occasionally hit them for as long as they remain on board.

- Commanders able to draw personal power from the ship's store, or feed it to other crew members at a certain loss.

- Empaths able to 'hail' bubbles or planes. Especially since all bubbles are completely cut off from communications other than OOC messages. This could require depositing some kind of relay at the relevant dock, which then can be accessed from anywhere on the same plane of aetherspace. For example, while on Frosticia, everyone might hear

(Aethercast): Avaerin, the Living Forestship broadcasts, "Is there anyone there who needs picking up? We're passing through."

Hmm, but then you'd need a way of replying. Um, maybe if you're standing at the portal room, you could PORTAL SEARCH RELAYS to see which ships have active relays, and you could PORTAL CONTACT AVAERIN (text)?

Edit: I really like this last one. For the main docks on prime, it might only go as far as the portal room.

what if you could go to another city's or communes dock and type.


EMPTY BODILY WASTE RECEPTICALE HERE

I'd also really, really like to have two empath stations.

Oh, and combateers should have another skill:

Blarghage Confuse the senses of an enemy algorenthine.

So that until the empath cures it, any ship looks that are sent to the crew are actually taken from a spot on the other side of aetherspace, meaning they can't navigate properly or see what else is around them.