Here's a list of various ideas for Aetherspace. Many of them are mine. Some of them are not. In any event, here they are!

I'm well aware that many of these ideas will never come to pass, but hopefully they're inspire other ideas that -will-.

Existing Modules

Aetherholds
Two points on them in general - the first, Particles shouldn't decay in them. It's hard enough getting and keeping the damn things without them decaying when they're properly stored. Secondly, increase the cargo capacity of them - 175k (for the room and hold) for only 50 tons is hardly worth it. These things are hellishly expensive - you're already spending a fortune to get a ship going, plus the gold you -do- earn is likely being split amongst several people. Holds should be helping you to recover the costs of a ship, not put you further in debt.
Jettison Cargo - A new ability for Aetherholds, allowing them to dump Glaetherial Dust/Auronidion Particles into space. Allows for peaceful trade between player ships, or for "friendly" pirates. IE: "Give us your stuff, and we won't blow you up." Also allows for pillaging options if you board an enemy ship - find their holds, and you can dump their cargo.
Stasis Field - An artifact upgrade for Aetherholds, to prevent anything from decaying in them, Dust or Particles.
Spacial Distortion Rune - An artifact upgrade to vastly increase the cargo capacity of an Aetherhold. The idea being to allow smaller ships to carry more cargo, without impacting their speed.
Emergency Bulkheads - An Aetherhold artifact that prevents Dust/Particles from being dropped on destruction of the ship.

Cloaking Module
First off, they need to be worth the 500 credits you spent on them in the first place. In fact, nevermind "first off". Just do that, please? Reduce their power consumption rates, make them flicker on and off less often, and allow anyone with appropriate permissions to de/activate it. Please?

Command Chair
Eidetic Memory Upgrade - Allows the ship to remember more Flashpoints. Might have different levels of this artifact, more expensive ones allowing more Flashpoints.
Past Lives Upgrade - Prevents the loss of Flashpoints upon ship destruction. Might have a chance of failure, so ships occasionally forget some Flashpoints, but should allow the ship to remember most of the Flashpoints most of the time.

Empathic Grid
Cog of Gnomish Reputation - Artifact which offers a slight (maybe 5%) improvement on prices when dealing with Gnome Merchant Ships.

Shield Orb
Lightning Rod - An artifact which allows a docked ship to ignore, or severly reduce the effectiveness of JinsonJolt.
Deflector Shield - An artifact which, when ship is sealing a dock, the shields become more focused to ward off damage from incoming shots. Completely negates passive damage from immersion in a Vortex.

Turrets
Explosive Warheads - Turret artifact which gives a chance of damaging multiple enemies in the same room. Thus, if you hit a swarm of Gorgogs, you have a chance to also hit something else in the same location as those Gorgogs. Each additional enemy beyond the first suffers -10% of the original damage, and with each hit, it checks to see if it'll damage another target. You can even end up damaging allied ships with this, if they happen to be in the sector you're attacking at the time (Friendly fire ain't, after all).

New Modules
Power Amplifiers - Unmanned modules which can supercharge other modules. Thus, an Empath with Distribute can draw power from these modules to overcharge another module, effectively giving the ship a boost without penalizing another station. The drawback is, while these are in use, they have a chance of exploding if damaged - destroying themself, and dealing significant damage to the module they're linked to, as well as some moderate damage to the hull of the ship. While not in use, they are perfectly safe - the more power being distributed from them, the greater the chance of explosion. The number of these modules a ship could hold is limited by ship size - A base of one module, plus one module per five rooms of the ship. Most ships should be able to carry at least two of these.
Power Crystals - Unmanned modules which increase the available power, and reserves of a ship by one and ten respectively. Thus, ship with five of these would have 150 reserves, and 15 power available. Limited only by the space available on the ship to place them.
Ram Scoop - Reduced power cost of standard operations, by slowly harvesting latent power from Aetherspace. Doesn't affect Power feats - only background power use from flying, or use of modules (perhaps including the Cloaking Module). Does not work while docked.
Transport Beacon - Allows teleportation between ships with an open communication channel. Optional: Artifact Upgrade to allow teleportation on/off ship, if within certain range of a dock. For example, if you are within 10 squares of a Prime dock, could Teleport Nexus. And, from any Portals room, could teleport back to the ship in question.

Events
Nexus Assault - In the event an org shield is dropped, Aetherships should be able to attack the Nexus by flying over the dock, and using Energy Collectors to siphon off power from the Nexus. This would work very much like sucking power from a Vortex, with a couple exceptions. First, obviously, this can only be done if the shield of the organization is dropped. Second, every Siphon damages the ship, as the Nexus in question lashes back against the attack - the damage shouldn't be enough to seriously threaten the ship by itself, but should still be notable. And third, a specialized guardian is summoned to fight the attacking ship. For the Pool of Stars, for example, an Angelic Host might be summoned. These guardians should be roughly between Dragons and Tendrils in strength, with a couple of perks over regular monsters - first and foremost, their attack has a range of two, making it harder to duck and dodge around them in the fight without getting hurt. Second, each attack has a small (5% to 10%) chance of Murkling or Worbling a random module on the ship. Third, these guardians will not attack any ship deeded to the organization. And fourth, they vanish of their own accord after about a day, if not slain. The idea here is to allow organizations to assault each other more, while still maintaining some passive defense for the other organization.
Gnomish Tax Evasion - Every two RL weeks or so (similar to Wildnodes), Gnome Merchant Ships change their loyalties. They keep track of who has spent the most dust at their ship over the course of one day, and at the end of that day, declare loyalty to an organization based on who spent the most. Until the next event, that ship will tithe 10% of all dust spent at it to the organization in question - the dust kept in a specialized "Space Hangar" (Perhaps a new Construct), which only specific ships have access to (essentially, a permissions list). Ships with access can enter, scoop up as much as they can hold, and use it to trade normally.

Miscellaneous Stuff
Bombard - Should ignore Shield/Circle, as well as Reflections, Dopplegangers, Fleshstone, etc. Any attack that takes five minutes to build up, and can blow chunks off a Construct shouldn't be bothered by some piddly little Inept Highmagic skill, or the like. Powerful protective magics such as Serpent should still stop the attack, however.
Manse Denizens - Should have aethership upgrades. For example, I might pay 200 credits to allow a manse denizen to work one of my Turrets, my Energy Collector, or my Empathic Grid. They should be approximately as skilled as an unspecialized Master, so basic functions can be attended to with reduced crew. For Turrets, they could be set to defensive or offensive - only shooting things that attack the ship first, or attacking anything that gets within range. Empaths should have a minimum sell value, and a maximum buy value for trading purposes, and will automatically do so whenever you pass a Gnome Trading Ship. Can be ordered to give gold/items to the owner of the ship, or anyone else on a permissions list, in order to get the gold/spheres from such expeditions. Energy Collector denizens can be set to "on" or "off." If they're on, they'll siphon whenever they can, and if they're off, they won't siphon at all.
Ramming - Lower, or negate the Power cost entirely. Takes too much, for too little gain.
Ship Size - In general, make larger ships worth while. Allow for more turrets on larger ships (Perhaps one extra turret for every 10 rooms beyond 15). Allow more Empath grids, also (Maybe 1 extra for every 20 rooms beyond 15). Allow increased Shield Orbs for larger ships (1 extra per 30 rooms above 15). Compensate for increased firepower and healing by making it harder to hit small ships - that is, a big ship gets more shots, but hits the smaller ones less often. Smaller ones are faster, and hit larger ships more easily. For example, a 1 room ship might have a 50% dodge rate, with each additional room reducing that dodge rate by 1%, to a minimum of 1% (There's always a -chance- someone will miss). This will also be affected by range - the base miss might be based on a range of two, with a modifier of 5% on the dodge rating for each room difference, as appropriate (increased dodge if you're further away, reduced if you're closer). These numbers are just suggestions to get the point across - actual numbers would have to be fiddled for balance.


This is what I have right now - please try to avoid flaming. You can point out a flaw with an idea while still being constructive.

I like these. Jettison is a nice thing that'd probably be easy to code and, even if it didn't happen often, it couldn't help make aetherships more interesting. It's one of those things that you wonder why you didn't think of it before.

Alot of these ideas are fantastic and would greatly improve Aetherspace. The thing is, however, that they focus mainly on beast shooting. I would love to seesome ideas on how to better manage Ship v. Ship combat as all it is now is "lol spiral! lol shoot hull!"

I am not sure about adding more turrets and empath grids. Granted it may seem smarter but when I thought about it after awhile I realized that...bashing would be too easy. For instance a ship with enough rooms for 5 turrets could blast dragons away in seconds. With empath grids, if the ship is already big enough to have more then one then it'd probably be impossible to shoot down with that many empath grids.

Honestly I'd -love- to have more turrets but it's the base of it that worries me

However if you have a ship with 2 empaths, and 5 guns, then the opponent can field the same, or swarm it with smaller ships. It brings strategy into play.

Right now Celest and Magnagora each have a massive battleship type ship, the Hammer and the Sanguine Drake. The Drake is only 3 rooms larger. There would be little difference in weaponry there.

I think it is a worthy idea, and it would encourage a wider range in ship size, and also bigger ships.

But there was suppose to be a downfall to bigger ships.. That downfall is movement. But I hear the wheel arti makes it seem like 40 rooms lighter?

If there's no drawback in place we are looking at small ships getting ganked just because. 1 round blasts from big 'war ships' because they can't tank the damage. Not even giving them a chance

trust me, even without a wheel, a small ship will massively outrun the Drake. It might take some damage in the attempt to run, but I do not think it will be a one hit kill.

If the small ship has a wheel, then it is likely to escape just fine, especially if the dodge thing is implemented to.

Personally, I'd also love to see a special dock that would carry one-two room aethermanses as well. Battlestar Estarra and the Fainling would leave the dock, and the Fainling docks onto the Battlestar Estarra. It only appears to be the B.E., but when the Empath/Commander gives the commands, the Fainling pops off in a space adjacent. You could have several, one for each ship.

You could actually have something akin to the Battlestar Galactica and other ships, with enough firepower to blast holes through other ships, but you still have to hit the itty bitty ships, and not all thirty gunners would be aiming at the same target and hit it.

If you have more than one empath grid, maybe it could only effect a certain amount of rooms then, or only so many modules.

Careful. You'll spark Ixchilgal's interest for his flying fortress he's trying to acquire

I personally like all these ideas (Which I should as I helped look over the rough draft and a few are mine). Yes some of these are a bit much to some, but if you're out in space as much as me or a few others, you'd notice some of these are just a few that you'd come up with yourself.

I REALLY HOPE FOR THE GNOMISH TAX EVENT, its an idea that would greatly increase activity in space and quite possibly influence others to go siphon more vortexes and teach those aetherbeasts a bit of Queen history (Another bites the dust).

So yeah, SUPPORT these ideas, or even just some of them, eitherway...do it!

The idea behind the larger ships would only work if the dodging was implemented. The idea was that smaller ships would have a huge defensive advantage, and larger ships a huge offensive advantage. If you're small, you can stay out of range, and dart around the big ships, hitting them from further away than they could hit you with any degree of accuracy, and you'd have the movement to ensure you stayed at that range. Where bigger ships would be able to hold positions easily.

And rankly, my 20 million gold ship -should- have an advantage over someone else's 5 million gold ship. Otherwise, why did I spend 20 million gold?

The minor, -minor- hull increase of larger ships now in no way compensates for the movement of smaller ships. As it stands, you can have one big ship that won't move fast, and takes only one, maybe two more shots to kill...or you can have two or three smaller ships which will completely destroy the bigger one, because they outgun it, and out maneuver it. Even assuming you killed one of their ships before they killed you, they still have ships up there doing whatever it is they want to do, against your...umm...zero ships?

This gives a -reason- to build a big ship. It now has an advantage - as well it should, because it cost more. Higher Expense = Higher Pay Off. Or at least, that's how it -should- work. You could still defeat a bigger ship, using a big ship of your own, or a group of smaller ships, just that against the group of smaller ships, you now at least have a -chance- of winning.

Aether-Fighters!!!!

YES!

A -rediculously- expensive module (300k?) that essentially launches from the ship. It takes 10 power with it, and can't be used for any feats, just for flying around. Has maybe 500 hull, so it could survive -maybe- one or two shots from a ship. Maybe. Very fast and hard to hit, though, and does fairly minor damage. You'd need a few of these to do any real damage, but they're hard to destroy. They can land at any dock, but can't launch again, except from ships. If they dock, respawn back in ship when they would normally run out of power and be destroyed in space. They don't respawn back in the ship when the ship is destroyed, if they're out flying in space (so, even if you destroy the carrier, still have to deal with the fighters). At least, until they invariably run out of power and implode...unless they make like crazy for a safe dock.

In fact, that means they can act as two purpose - escape modules! Booyah! Maybe an artifact upgrade that when the ship explodes, anyone locked into a module is put into one of these fighters, and launched into space just before the explosion. They have until they run out of power, or are rescued to find a place to land. Maybe in this instance, they automatically start sending a distress beacon out...

I'd like to join in saying some of these are very good ideas indeed! We'll certainly add some of these to our 'aetherspace list' which was started with Elryn's also quite good ideas!

(Now if only we had the time to code them....)

Hrm, I put this idea through IDEA, but I'd like some thoughts on it.

More or less, aetherpirates running around. They operate as denzins, only a little bit different. One, they can have between 2 to X numbers of rooms. Two, depending on rooms, they always have at least one turret, and one command chair. Others are random. They function just like normal ships, only piloted by denzins. You can choose to either shoot them to dust, or to ram and board them. If you board, you can fight the pirates on board, and they can come on board your ship as well. And then if you win, you can loot the captain's quarters which has X gold.

Just a little idea.

Yarrrr

oh oh oh and they have a decent sized crew of denizens that are between gorgog and kephera strength?

Depending on the size of the ship.

They also have a swabby named "Bucky".

And a roc sized parot...