This is a thread NOT to gripe about the aetherspace system but rather to constructively brainstorm and give ideas on how to make aetherspace more fun and worth the time and effort needed to get involved in it. If the posts aren't constructive, they will be deleted.

1. Add a module that allows ships to do auto pathfinding to aetherbubbles. (make this available to anyone who has permisions to the pilot chair)

Might as well do it based on a coordinate system so that new bubbles arn't automatically found by the device and people will still need to explore to find them.


2. Beef up Xp rewards in aetherspace
3. Beef up xp rewards on aetherbubbles
4. Allow something in the ship to hold the essence of corpses so they can be offered when you land back home.

To repeat what I said earlier...


My first idea would be to greatly increase the amount of experience gained, to make hunting in aetherspace far more viable in terms of xp/person/hour than what it is to hunt in regular PvE.

Secondly, a system for reaching the bubbles more quickly would be great. We already have glide, so a way to path from dock to dock would be great to have as well.

Might have more later when I have thought more.

Condense crew needs, allow pilots to hunt alone.

Should I repost my list of suggestions here?

Something else I thought of, is aetherspace intended to be an interesting/viable place to spend time on by itself or is it seen as mainly something that needs to be traversed so you can get to an aetherbubble?

Right now other than selling particles no one spends any time in aetherspace, they just rush to the target aetherbuble/dock as fast possible (often times instantly, thus bypassing all of aetherspace). This should be a sign that things need to be done to make spending time in actual aetherspace worthwhile.

The main reasons I don't play in Aetherspace:
Takes too long to get anywhere.
Dying REALLY sucks.
The benefits are pretty sucky.
Requirements are too high. It's really hard to get a full crew for pvp, much less 6 people with even adept Aethercraft who can all stay concious for an hour.

Costs >> Benefits (imploding = death for everyone, lose everything in the holds, and lose all the power. Losing the power, incidentally, makes it a royal arsepain to get the ship back to the city dock to restore said power because ships respawn to the Aetherplex dock).

I think that people would use them for powerharvesting more if the vortexes didn't autofling, even on occasion. I like the commander skill that lets you use a vortex to fling yourself, but the vortecies flinging you when you're out collecting is just frustrating.

EDIT: Just to echo daganev, one usually can't even get karma from aether trips because the corpses decay in the time it takes to get back home if you don't use flashpoints. Same for Xion, compounded by it being way in the bum**** middle of nowhere on the Elemental plane, coupled with the removal of being able to flash to/from Prime Aetherspace.

I have to parrot what everyone else is saying.

I have my own ship and I'm a tran'd Commander, yet I haven't taken my ship out since Aetherspace was new. Reason? It takes me too long to find a full crew, much less a crew that actually knows what they are doing. I also rarely have time to fly a full mission (1+ hours).

So for specific solutions:
+ Allow one person to pilot a ship and successfully hunt. Maybe modules to automatically heal normal damage or at least allow the pilot to operate the grid and turrets themselves?
+ Make it easier to get around in Aetherspace.
+ Crewed flights should really be reserved for battle and power gathering.

Being in the scifi geek that I am I do have an interest in Aetherspace, even in a fantasy game. But I don't have the money or resources it takes to buy and build a ship that will survive the pounding of Aetherspace. Ships are big and expensive. And the only options are room sized ships.

Why not small, personal ships? Perhaps have "fighters" of some sort, one "room", very quick, with minial weaponry. Maybe mountable aetherbeasts that people could ride to different places. They would cost a lot less too, allowing everyone to get involved in the travel aspect of Aetherspace, but without the dedication and money needed for the big ships.

Then you can't move or fight, and no aethership can realistically stay in one room while spawning multiple critters while linking to a vortex. You always have to hit and run.

It would certainly be more viable if the powercost for immersion was significantly lowered. Then you could immerse, draw power, run once the aetherbeasts got too heavy, kill them, and repeat. Whereas, I think as it stands you'd need a large hull to make it economic.

Just reposting my list so it does not get lost in the main thead.

1. All specializations need to give some benefit to the solo pilot.

There is a very large disincentive to take a skill that requires other players to make it useful. I think that each specialization should have an affect on basic piloting and solo craft handling. I would even go so far as to say that the empath and combat specs should allow you to use the empathic grid and a gun respectively while solo (no clue how much coding effort this would be to support). If that could not be done then each spec should be given flashpoints and fuse (and perhaps silent running). Perhaps give commanders a minor whistle affect to compensate (only can summon ship to one dock, requires you to bond with it somehow taking a lot of power/time to making switching uncommon).

This still forces solo pilots to use aetherspace for nothing more than transport (and exploring), I honestly think that for aetherspace usage to greatly increase you would need to allow for solo fighting of both players and npcs.

Group activities should be added on to a solo base, not the other way around.

2. The XP/Hour/Person of aetherspace hunting should be greater than the possible XP/Hour/Person of normal hunting

There needs to be a strong incentive to get a 4 man crew together. Right now people who get groups together go to Astral or Muud they do not bother with aetherspace. If aetherspace already allows for more XP/hour/Person then this needs to be advertised.

3. There should be some kind of simplistic map available for aetherspace. It would just show a very general location, each character on the map could represent like 10-20 of the "normal view screen" areas. It could not be used for exact navigation but it would allow you to quickly see your relative position to landmarks. I understand the desire to keep a strong exploration mentality to aetherspace but it is seriously a huge barrier to entry for new players.

4. Sitting still should be far safer. Right now I hate moving around in aetherspace because if someone comes up in the real world and I need to step away from the keyboard for 5 min I can't. If there are no aether beasts on your screen and you are not moving you should have an almost 0 chance of having any beasts spawn around you. Even better would be if the vast majority of aetherbeasts where made to be non agro and a special symbol was created for the very rare agro beast. Again the extreme ease of getting killed is a huge barrier to entry for the beginning pilot.

5. Aethership death should cost less power. I hate having my ship implode more than I can say. Not only do I personally lose experience and power but my ship loses all flashpoints and all power. This is beyond harsh and should only be reserved (if it is even allowed at all) for PvP losses. The basic power drain of flight should be plenty of a "cost" for aetherspace.

6. Gliding is great but you should be able to stop mid glide. I would be fine with this causing you to overshoot a bit but honestly flying would be so much easier if it did not require the constant key pressing (though this is also caused by the extreme danger you are in if you stop for even 10 seconds, see #4)

7. You should have the ability to check the area around a dock before launching. Some high traffic areas become infested with aetherbeasts which turns launching into a very risky experience.

8. There should be a "newbie" area in aetherspace. This should be a place with very few aetherbeasts (none of which are agro) and very easy to navigate around. You could add in some NPCs that do basic tutorial type quests for this area (fly to point A and back, kill X beasts, do a basic trade, etc).

9. As a compromise between extreme isolation and giving aetherspace a "different" feel you should allow broadcast centers to be buildable on bubbles. These would allow normal aetherspace communication from that room for everyone, and perhaps extend communication to a wider area for the org that controlled it. A ship addition that drained power when on but allowed for communication would also be nice. Of course everyone just gets around this with messages (which is a different issue) but I think it would be a nice touch.

10. You should add honors lines for things like killing big aethership baddies or perhaps for successfully flying (without fusing) to out of the way places. This is a very minor thing but it is just one more incentive to use aetherspace.

11. More events should be held directly in aetherspace, not on the bubbles. Anything from scavenger type events to sponsored battles in the arena to who can kill the most NPCs in X time.

Agreed. Right now it just isn't worth using. For most ships, "aetherbeasts getting too heavy" is right around 1.

I haven't been in Aetherspace in some time (I'm pretty sure I haven't seen any of the new beasts), but I think more challenges for crews in the form of boss-like creatures that existed near the Void would be interesting. Perhaps, if the newer beasts don't do this, they could make use of the afflictions within Combateer to spice things up a bit.

I'd like to disagree with the suggestion of making things for only pilots. Aetherbubbles are already available as a pilot-only activity (provided you can dodge any beasts coming your way, but that's not too hard) and it alienates a lot of the playerbase since getting an aethership is expensive for the Regular Joe's that play Lusternia. I suppose the same can be said of my suggestion since not everyone can pour hundreds of lessons into Aethercraft (and Empath to cure said afflictions), but then again the beast afflictions could be made temporary to fix that issue.

As for the experience thing that Kiradawea mentioned:

What were you hunting? Even before the experience increase, I was able to take a character from newbie levels to the mid/late 20s in the course of a few hours. Of course this is us versus dragons and the occasional tendril-thingy (which were the hardest creatures at the time to my knowledge) so my example may be a bit skewed, but...

Are there any ship-based games available for Aetherspace? Some form of Aether-tag could be a fun team sport, though that may sound better on paper than it would be in practice.

If you're referring to my suggestions, when I say "pilot" I mean anyone who can pilot an aethership, i.e. anyone who can put 15 lessons into Aethercraft.

As frustrating as it is to not be able to get a crew, I don't like the idea of reducing the need for a crew. That defeats the purpose. Instead, provide more incentive for people to join crews, and to do things other than Commander.

This is already the case. The rest looks like good suggestions though.

I'll repeat the criticism given by myself and in a form, Avaer as well in the past on this subject. Actually, you can even see it for yourself if you open up a poll asking what each person's specialization is. The commander specialty can almost exclusively be blamed for ruining aetherspace. Fights are ruined by a tflash version called spiral. Fusion has been fixed quite a bit, but everybody still chooses to be a commander for it.

Very very basic suggestions, not nearly all of them however, include adding fusion to Aethercraft and not a specialization or removing it altogether if the point is to have people actually -fly-. If you want fights to be incorporated, it is an absolute -must- that either spiral and the empathic similar ability must go or, and this is my preference, allow a 10 power prompt for the command chair, a separate 10 power prompt for the grid, and a separate 10 power prompt to be shared by all turrets. (if necessary, it could be a separate 10 power prompt for each turret). You've seen every fight. It's spiral, shoot shoot shoot, heal. Then it's fly, shoot, shoot, shoot, heal. Then repeated. Every single fight is like this. It's fun at first, boring the second time and the third time to most people.

Lots of ideas listed in Avaer's topics and my own that followed his I think are still very worthwhile considering. I'll list more when I have more time.

I need to try this again then. I just bounced off everything making general progress to my goal. I clearly was doing something wrong. I will solve this in game though, thanks!