What do you think of how each spec is balanced relative to the others, and how skillful crew-based group combat is? I'm interested, because I think we're very close to a good system, but there are key problems that need to be addressed before it will ever get used. Quite frankly (and especially with flashpoints) hardly anyone actually uses this entire system which was coded - it's like a new class with three skillsets was unveiled and the few people who took advantage of it never actually made use of a guild skill.

In the first question, I'm asking how equally useful and interesting each of the specializations are compared to each other. Are Empaths more critical than Commanders in most situations? Will having a crew with one trained Combateer vastly overpower a crew with one trained Commander? Are there skills in one specialization that are overpowering, or are there skills in another that are vastly underpowered?

In the second question, I'm asking what aetherspace combat is like. Just like regular combat, it has to be balanced, skillful and interesting - are we there yet? On a scale out of five, how fair and balanced is ship to ship combat? Are big ships just too overpowering compared to multiple little ones? Are small ships just too fast to ever catch? Is the ratio of offensive to defensive strategies equal, and is it fun to match your crew's skills against anothers?

Your second question strikes me as odd.

Aether combat is balanced. It really can't be any other way. Everyone has the same skill pools and same basic modules.

With the possible exception of a small ship with a range enhancing artifact against a substantially larger ship, large ships are going to win against small ships, and multiple ships are going to win against almost any goliath of a ship if they have more than three turrets between themselves.

EDIT: Adjusting for crew skill and lessons invested, of course.

It does seem balanced, but with a few issues with aetherspace and the general..idea of combat.

I mean, there's the spam. Targetting and working modules through all of that. Then there's the escaping speed of a fleeing ship- the Avaerin, for instance, is never going to catch the Sickle.

Some ships can barely survive any blasts, too, so they're doomed if they go one on one.

Aethership combat just doesn't seem to happen often enough, and when it does, there's just too big an arena to run around and too much spam to deal with for it to be truly enjoyable.

(I also added some stuff onto your Aetherspace thing on the envoy wiki, Elryn, if you checked since..a bit back then, heh.)

Ooo, so you did! Yay!

In systems like that, balance rather refers to if there's not just one tactic you can use which wins every time.

Those who voted the specs are equally useful, what spec are you?

I'm tempted to vote equally balanced...

In the tedious, frustrating, and not-very-fun manner, at least. I find aetherships as a whole to be rather annoying and not worth the time or effort. Too much spam, too large, and has the whole Kalodan "pewpew" stigma forever etched into its being.

Assuming you've tried a station other than piloting, and switched off the map display, what sort of changes would make it more interesting, less spammy, and more worthwhile to you?

And what is this "pewpew stigma" thing about? I have as much distaste for the incident in question as anyone, I imagine (I was on it but refused to participate if you remember) but other than a vaguely irritated memory at the thought it doesn't particularly affect my views of aetherspace...

Wait, people use aetherspace combat?

Aetherspace is too big and ships are too fast for aethercombat to be realistic.

Even on a station other than pilot with the map off, you've got ship-movements occurring extremely rapidly. You need to target creatures with the ship movements spamming you. Unlike hunting, you're fighting aetherbeasties while the ship is... moving extremely rapidly, because most pilots don't want to tank hordes of critters. There's spam problem #1.

#2: Aetherspace is TOO BIG. G'luck finding anyone except during raids. In fact, that's the main purpose of aetherships now, with the addition of bombard. Aetherships are intended primarily for raids and for events, in an effort to "try to make more people participate in aetherspace". Most events require some aetherspace travel now. Being so big means you have to run forever in order to actually get to a destination-- more spam than running around the Undervault, and you can't really stop to take a breather if y'need to. Again, hordes of aetherbeasties.

#3: If you're trying to PILOT the thing... well, given the caveat in your question, I'm sure you know what my spam complaint is with that little fun-spot.

Given these, there's a lot of disincentive to really get into aetherspace. It's a nuisance. This means that a lot of the aetherbubbles go unexplored and underutilized. Even people who spend a lot of time in aetherspace only go to a small handful of the bubbles, due to the nature of aetherspace.

How to fix it? I don't really know. These issues seem to be the entire point of aetherspace-- they're part of its fundamental operation. I'd like to see Aetherspace be a quarter of its current size, if not even less. Fewer aether-beasties as well, make it so that they're generally rare except when "linking" to those aethernodes. I'd really like to see some form of a gnome aether-taxi that lets people go visit non-organizational aetherdocks (not Nil/Celestia/etc) for a price, to encourage exploration of the aetherbubbles, but I've been told this is never happening.

not sure how the classes can be balanced together as you need 1 of each to be super sucessful.. id like to see more turrets for more hullspace/rooms in the manse/whatever ie a turret for every 5 rooms

or on that idea maybe 4 turrets up to 30 rooms than at a turret every 10-15 rooms.? idk thoughts?

Re: Xenthos. Good points. Trying to come up with solutions to address each in turn:

#1: Make it possible just to turn off movement messages entirely?

#2: I'm thinking of some variation of the wormhole idea that is more about making aetherspace more connected and quicker to traverse (as well as along more common routes). For example, if you could create wormholes between two points that are at most 150 spaces distant and at least 20 spaces distant from any existing opening, so you can 'hop' along a route towards your destination through multiple wormholes rather than having either extreme of instantly warping there or having to pilot manually the whole way. Maybe Commanders could use a special type of wormhole that extends up to 300 spaces, or they could warp to the nearest wormhole entrance, or something to make them a little more effective at it.

The other side of this is that nexus worlds I think really should extend into aetherspace. I don't think they should be able to be majorly affected by traditional ground-based raiding.

As to aetherbeasts, fewer would be ok, but it might also make silentrun less useful. If there were fewer, I'd hope they were generally faster and more powerful than they are at the moment.

The last thing Lusternia needs is less fighting.

And no, I don't consider aethership combat to be fighting.

Fair enough, I think nexus worlds should be much more affected in aetherspace than outside it, then. Keep the ground-based raiding, but make it much more worthwhile to use aetherships to influence a world.

Considering the entire point of nexus worlds, I thought, was for aetherspace incentive... I think it might need looking at.

Edit: Meh, maybe they weren't intended for aetherspace. In which case, we need some sort of aetherspace nation-influencing mechanics which has never materialized!

They weren't meant entirely for aetherspace, I think it's pretty clear that aetherspace was a large factor in the design though.

Regarding the spam, I think the only cure for that would be for them to implement an ANSI Escape/Codes terminal where you use positional updates to make the map refresh and have other areas (like messages and communication) appear elsewhere. Sort of like this.



For combat, I was thinking maybe instead of using the big map, as soon as you approach a ship and enter combat mode you force all ships in the radius into an "instanced combat" map, a separate isolated map akin to what Star Control 2 does, say a 20x20, 30x30, or 40x40 grid, it's basically an asteroids or spacewar type area where if you move above the map you wrap around to the other side. You can't escape the map unless you use an escape power, and that will take at least 1-2 minutes real time to evoke, so while waiting you'd have to defend yourself. This would force combat on more even terms, preventing "quick escapes". This could encourage "ram-boarding" as well.