I would like to suggest an addition to the aetherspace system as it currently stands, and this would involve allowing each nation to 'claim' an expanding sphere of influence in aspace in which they gain benefits. It's somewhat like demesnes - regions originating from the prime docks that contain continuous regions of friendly space. Let me explain how I think it could work.

Claimed Territory

- Each city or commune dock would have an area of influence around it which is considered to be the territory of that nation. The radius can be whatever, but I'd suggest something like 1-4x maximum viewscreen radius.

- Ships which are allied by nations (can dock at their port) will receive bonuses while in friendly territory. This could include:
** The ability to hear and use normal channels as if they were on the prime plane. (The primary benefit)
** Slightly increased hull resistance.
** Slightly increased dust from monsters killed.
** Any more?
** Maybe slightly increased ship speed?

- There is no penalty for going into non-friendly claimed territory - this is not about cutting off access to aetherspace.

- There should also be some 'real-world' benefit to expanding your aether borders, perhaps something like each outpost you have creates 1 extra spawning bashable critter in Etherseren/Etherglom/Water/Earth, in addition to what is already there. (The extra reach of your influence drawing the attention of nasty things throughout the aetherverse to manifest in your areas, by way of explanation.) Maybe it could be as simple as multiplying or adding to power generation.

- Claimed territory could be extended by aether outposts, each of which can only be placed at the borders of claimed territory themselves. These are elaborated on below.


Aether Outposts

- Each nation would be able to collect large amounts of aether commodities through their member's fleets, which could be combined to make special outpost-spawning objects. For example, Serenwilde might use 250 rock, 250 spice, and 250 ice to create a Yggdrasil seed object. The mechanism by which this is achieved might be a 'gnome ship'-type entity located next to each prime dock, using the same trade mechanics to accumulate necessary commodities.

- This object would be able to be given to a ship with a hold by the power ministry of that nation. The pilot would be able to activate the outpost in a location that is exactly on the fringe of previous claimed territory. Using the previous example, a Seren ship might use the Yggdrasil seed to create a Yggdrasil Tree entity in the following way (assuming that the claim radius is 2 squares, ie not to scale):


~~~~~~~~~~~~
~SSSSS~~~~~~
~SSSSS~~~~~~
~SS?SS~~~~~~
~SSSSS~~~~~~
~SSSSS~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~

# = outpost
S = Serenwilde territory (this wouldn't show up on the ingame map, only give an extra line in the room desc)

~~~~~~~~~~~~
~SSSSSSSS~~~
~SSSSSSSS~~~
~SS?SS#SS~~~
~SSSSSSSS~~~
~SSSSSSSS~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~


- Mechanically, each outpost would consist of an object in the aetherspace 'room' (eg. "A Yggdrasil world tree anchors its roots amid the aether currents here."), a dock which friendly ships can use, and a single physical room with a description particular to that nation. (eg. "Inside the trunk of the Yggdrasil tree. It's like a whole tree, in space, man. Whoa.").

- Any outpost that has territory bordered by unclaimed or opposing territory is vulnerable to attack, achieved by first weakening the shield through concentrated orbital bombardment (which will take a fair chunk of time), then when the shield is gone the enemy can dock and enter the location and use a prepared timed annihilation object to destroy the outpost completely. Or something. Not completely sure how to make this limited but achievable and balanced.

- : You can travel from your nexus on prime to any outpost physical room for a couple of power, and back for free. From any outpost you can launch small 1-room pods that cannot travel far beyond the outpost but have about half a turret of offensive utility. Thus as soon as an outpost distress signal (or mob warning) happens, even without ships available people can try to defend. Of course you should conglutinate back to your prime nexus if you are killed in a pod, regardless of planar skill.


Celest's outposts might be lighthouses, or star crystalline entities, or whatever. Glomdoring's could be insect nests/webs/twisted trees. I don't know, but you get the idea.


I think this could improve the situation in a number of ways.
1) It gives a reason for aetherspace fighting.
2) It makes sure using aetherspace doesn't separate you from the rest of the game as much as it does now.
3) It adds a competitive but not inherently penalizing system of nation conflict.
4) It's darn nifty.
5) It makes the vastness of aetherspace a little more functional - there is a reason for it.



So, what do you all think? Any suggestions for improvement or alternatives?



Edit: Ok, having reread all this I admit it's a little haphazardly presented, but it was a random thought I had that grew as I was writing. Hopefully it makes some sense, in spite of my rambling.

While this thread is open, I thought I might also add an alternative suggestion for just getting more interactivity in aetherspace itself that was posted a while back:





We so need an aetherspace envoy! So much beautiful work by the admin that just isn't getting used at all.

I really like lots of that.

This concept sounds like a great addition to aetherspace!

Adjustments to the original idea:

Nation-wide benefits:
- For each loyal outpost a nation has, the time their citizens take to TELEPORT NEXUS will be decreased by 1% of the previous value. If the time taken by a nation with no outposts is 10 seconds, with 100 outposts it will take about 3.69 seconds.

- For each loyal outpost a nation has, the cost of linking new manses or ships to their nexus will be decreased by 1% of the previous value. So it costs a nation with no outposts 5000 power, a nation with 100 outposts 1849 power. The cost of planar discretionary abilities is also decreased in the same manner.

- For every loyal outposts a nation has, there will be one special aether vermin creature spawning every half hour in their sewer system. The creature type depends on the nation, but they will be non-aggressive and of might "extraordinarily strong". I'm not sure what the commune equivalent to sewers is supposed to be, but for now the tree elevation will have to do.

- Each loyal outpost costs 10 power a month to sustain.


Outpost attacks:
- Attacks against outposts should be difficult, and limited in time.

- To attack an outpost, a hostile fleet must possess Combateers with the skill of Jinsunjolt. By firing upon the outpost with this skill they can weaken the shield barrier from 100% to 0%. I suggest a normal jinsunjolt should do about 0.5% damage, with starburst turrets doing slightly more. On being hit there would be a message across the city/commune channel:

(Serenwilde): Outpost S-21 says, "I am under attack!"

alternatively, something like

(Serenwilde): Lady Safron of the Trees says, "One of our outposts is under attack!"

- The shields would regenerate naturally over time, and an Empath can assess the shield strength at any time by using their Analyze skill.

- Once an outpost has its shields reduced to under 5%, all ships will be able to dock at the location. The raiding team must then travel to the location and PLANT FIREBLOOM (for the communes) or TUNE SHATTERSTONE (for the cities). This requires about 5 seconds uninterrupted focus to achieve, as well as a fireblossom or shatterstone object. By varying the ease of obtaining and storing these items, the admin can control how often outposts can be attacked over time, so one powerful nation cannot near instantly wipe out dozens of their enemies outposts.

- An unstoppable countdown is then started, giving time for both defenders and raiders to leave, say 20 seconds. At this point, the outpost is destroyed.

- A possible addition might be that if a nation's prime dock or nexus world dock is not protected by an outpost, it can have its shield attacked similarly, allowing hostile fleets to dock when it is decreased to 5% or under.

Misc:
- There should be a way to view and access your nations outposts. I suggest the following commands useable at the portal room of your org:

PORTAL OUTPOSTS
Shows a list of which outposts you have (and possibly how far they are from your nexus?) as well as their shield strength. For example,

Serenwilde Aetherspace Outposts:
S-1 -- 21 godfeet south, 100 godfeet east --
S-2 -- 124 godfeet south, 50 godfeet east --
S-3 -- 10 godfeet north, 200 godfeet west --
S-5 -- 231 godfeet south, 23 godfeet west --


PORTAL TRANSLATE TO
A transverse-clone that shifts you with eq loss to one of your outposts. Costs 1 power.


- There also should be ways to defend your outposts if you don't have ships available. I suggest something like the following:

A command at every outpost room will be DETACH POD, shifting you to a single-room aethership pod that cannot move, and has only a single turret in it operating at only 25% efficiency. This command would cost 5 power to use. The pod would appear in aetherspace, but as it would be sheltered behind the shield of the outpost it could not be damaged unless the outpost shield was taken below 50%. The pod's hull strength would be 1000, and would have no power available for use. The user inside would be treated as being inside nation territory, as would the outpost room itself, meaning org conglutination applies.

If a pod was hit while the outpost shields are above 50% and the shield does not absorb the blow, the turret module will only be knocked off balance for a short while.

Yes. Most ideas here interesting.

I would furthermore suggest having the outposts being somewhat randomized, so they each have some vague semblance of personality.

For example, let's say there are three variables: outward appearance, inward appearance, and denizens. Working from a Glom theme, there would be three outward appearances: a great aetheric ravenwood tree, a great aetheric rowan tree, or a great aetheric hemlock tree. Then the inside would have three possible appearances: a dark hollow swathed in webs, a pitch-black hollow, or a glimmering aether crow's nest. Then there would be three possible local denizens: a one-eyed crow, a daughter of night, or a shadow faeling. With just three variables, there's a good variety of outposts.

We could also have a personality determine the outpost's reaction (offensive/defensive), sort of like the aethership personailties. The outpost personality could be based on the inside appearance so that it's not immediately identifiable by attackers outside.

It's a good idea. But it's not viable yet. Not until we have a lot more people with ships, and a lot more people with ships with constant crews, that would make this viable.

Until we make a reason for there to be those ships, there won't be.

Exactly.

Increasing experience to be worthwhile to high-levels would be a great start.

Experience is a separate issue, and can't be solved by simple increases. The only way that will be addressed is by scaling xp by level somehow, and this has already been pointed out. Unfortunately, the aetherspace system lies beyond the purview of the envoys, so we just have to hope that improvement suggestions are spotted here and perhaps some implemented.

Also, thinking about it some more, I'm not actually sure the number of aetherships is low. Given that each ship is operated by three to five people, and that normal conflicts rarely involve teams of more than fifteen even defending, that only requires about five ships from each organization for full capacity. Serenwilde certainly has more than that, and I know Magnagora and Celest have quite a few as well. I haven't seen what Glomdoring have available for use. But we're certainly not far at all from an optimal number of aetherships.