Implementation:
This module would not be mannable, but would mean that pieces of every aethercreature your ship explodes have a chance of being collected. These items would appear in the ramscoop room, and might not just be gold, but also commodities such as gemstones, or even RP items that can be collected, enchanted, or sold to mobs for gold - if you see a captain wearing the scales of a black dragon, you probably won't want to run into his crew in battle.

The amount and type from each creature should vary, but it needs to be kept in mind that this bounty must be shared between a crew of between 3 and 6. Any RP item that is obtained will decay quickly unless it is stored in the ramscoop room. This opens the possibility of piracy - stealing such items from other ships.

Obviously only the big critters would have a chance of giving up anything of significant value, and that chance would be something along the lines of 50% chance of a gold reward, 10% chance of a comm reward, and 2% chance of a special item reward.

I would suggest a cost for the module of around 100,000 gold.

Purpose:
Aether crews are hard to find. Really, really hard to find. The experience of hunting things is much more enticing now (about the equivalent of mid-level bashing for a large crew), but that is about it. While the harder creatures further out in aetherspace might be more valuable in terms of experience, that alone probably isn't going to be comparable to bashing solo for the same length of time, because there is no profit made.

Now, unlike bashing/influencing you don't use up health vials or bromide vials or any other consumable, so one might be tempted to say that there should be no reward other than experience. But I feel the difficulty in forming and maintaining a crew require some sort of further enticement. Making gold by joining a crew would certainly satisfy that requirement. We also need to remember that many quests have significant gold rewards when the only investment is time.


Any opinions or thoughts?

Edit: As an example, say you kill 10 gorgog swarms. Gorgogs are low-level monsters, so they might occasionally drop 300 gold each. Out of the ten, 5 will drop the gold, so you have made 1500 gold. They are probably too little to have any bodyparts which are useable as commodities or special items.

Well, maybe a little less gold than that. I don't know, I'm sure the admin can balance it so that it is slightly less than the bashing equivalent.

I like. Let me bathe in the warm fountain of your fertile imagination.

Loot!! That would definitly encourage more crew people to show thier preety faces, But it may also encourage fights among them, for example if you get one special item and a bit of gold whos going to get it?

Actually, scratch the mention of gemstones. That would upset the jeweller's business. It would have to be basic commodities, like the raw gems.

Edit: As for who gets it... I have no idea, I guess that's up to the crews to sort out. If its a family crew, it might be an even split of gold. If its a hired crew, you might negotiate to take 10% of the bounty, 20%, whatever.

ew

Steel, iron and things like that would be useful and would make sense, if you destroyed another aethership. And would make it a reason to actually fight another aethercraft.

If the basic idea is palateable, you can add all sorts of things to address other issues like the need for ship-to-ship combat.

What if there are a few very rare items that help your ship or crew while you have them? A magical dragon's eye might allow your ship to see one extra space further. The crystal heart of a rock elemental (I don't remember what creatures are on Earth ) might very slightly increase your ship's hull strength. The sucker of a tentacle of Kethuru might allow your collector to leech power from an enemy nexus or docked ship (slowly, of course).

Destroying a ship would mean those items were lost (or at least had a chance of being lost), but as it might take 100's upon 100's of creatures to find those items, why not ram and loot your enemies to get them easier?

All of that is a bit out there though, the basic idea is just getting gold from aetherhunting.

It would be nice if you got something that was super rare, like an arm of a linix that could be used as a shield, or maybe the ear of a pygmie that could be used as a necklace?

This might be incredibly cool, but I see one side effect.
As with every practically unlimited source of gold (excluding petty amounts, like ratting), this would flood the market with sovereigns. As a result, everything will be more expensive, ESPECIALLY credits. As an end result:
-OOC credit buyers, aethership crews = happy
-Rest of the realm = very unhappy
Same things happened in Achaea with fishing.

EDIT: Better example. Same things happened here in Lusternia when more than a few people realised that they can bash on Astral and survive. Credit prices increased from 2500 to about, hmm, 6000?

Aethership combat at vortexes is too trivially automated, and everyone does it. It's just too easy, like ratting. Something appears, you target it. You regain balance from targetting, you shoot it. It dies, you stop. On collector, something appears, you stop collecting. It dies, you start up again. Only the pilot has to do anything, and that's on the rare chance the ship teleports away while siphoning.

Aethership PvE combat needs to be more interesting first, with afflictions and long range attacks from mobs.

But anyway, I think maybe we should wait for the aethercraft specializations to appear. It would actually make sense to first let that happen, before adding anything else to the experience. We don't know yet (or, at least, I don't know) what these specializations will be, and maybe they'll add some of the things mentioned here.

There's my two cents.

Well, I guess this idea is getting tabled now. Stay tuned for an up and coming necro, though!

Thank you, thank you Elryn, I'll take it from here.

What about two different items?

A holding box (50K gold) which holds an unlimited amount of items while the ship is in Aetherspace; upon docking, it dumps its smaller contents on the ground and jettisons teh heavy cargo after a while (So you can sell the heavy cargo and launch again). Ramming a ship would have a higher chance of hitting the room with the holding box, and if you hit it, you'd leech some random items and gold from the Aetheric holding box. Since the box holds an unlimited amount of matter, it would serve as a cargo hold - You'd be able to take ice from Frosticia to sell at commodity stores (Cooks would use it to make ice cream). You could help transport Algontherine eggs and such from the Facility to the Aetherplex. You could run candy from Crunkindivia to other places. And you could get hit by pirates (Both players and denizens) along the way.

The Bussard ram-scoop (100K and a Star Trek reference token) would let you suck in loot left by slain Aetheric creatures. Those wouldn't be common items; they'd be bulky items you could only store in your storage box (Heavy cargo) which you could then sell somewhere else for gold.

I think trading would give people a reason to go to the Aetherspace. As for it being a money fountain, don't make it produce gold; make it produce commodities (Eh, what about a bubble that produces cheap silk?) and exclusive Aether-only items. Gold should be equivalent to bashing, and should be spread over time. After the second or fourth wave, the monsters would stop generating gold for a while. It would be very interesting to see some Aetherbubbles become like the Far East was to late medieval europe; it takes a long while to get there, and you probably won't survive, but you'll come back loaded with valuable commodities. I'd love to see special commodities that can only be obtained in the Aetherways. Nothing essential, though; Aetherways items should be luxuries, better than common objects but not fundamentally superiour so that they become a necessity.

And maybe some of the items around aetherspace should have an impact on the aetherbubbles. E.g Somebody in Frosticia buys the scales of a certain creature you slew.So, lets say they buy the scales of gorgogs (Do they have scales?). You fly around aetherspace killing gorgogs for their scales, to come back to Frosticia to sell them for a decent amout of gold.
Of course those types of items would be useless to anypne without an aethership so I doubt it would cause a bloat in the market.

We actually have something on the drawing table similar to this suggestion which may or may not ever see the light of day (as we are backed up right now and haven't had a chance to review the feasibility). I will say that we would avoid situations that would create unlimited gold or commodities (so don't get your hopes up in that regard).

Anyway, does anyone have a better suggestion for a module rather than "ramscoop"? That just sounds a bit too sci-fi to me. Remember, aetherships are actually living creatures.

Give it a mouth.

Nest..
The command chair is an egg, the scoop would be a nest.

I like mouth better than nest.. or a possible Etheric Pouch.

Maybe gills, or respirator?

Aether Harvester.


I like the whole Far East analogy Verithrax suggested.

Containment or capture module. Obviously I didn't mean for it to be called a Bussard ram-scoop in game. I suggest that all gold and Aetheric commodities are generated gradually over time, instead of dynamically through player input; that means there won't be a constant influx of gold. However, it should be enough so that Aetherships can pay for themselves over a length of time. Aetheric commodities should be luxuries and rarities, not something that becomes standard. Some suggestions:

Aetherweave: What the gnomes make their clothes out of. Flexible and light like silk, but it goes stiff on impact. Sewing with Aetherweave is a fairly high skill in Tailoring, (Just before Transcendant) and it allows the tailor to replace silk with Aetherweave. Aetherweave items last longer and have a marginal increase in their stats, if they're enchanted. Some designs can only be made with Aetherweave.

Starsteel: A vaguely iridescent metal that is liquid at room temperature; it has to be heated and then cooled down gradually so it crystalizes into something extremely hard. Items made with Starsteel can't be smelted (Smelting it yields some mercury, some coal, and a little bit of common steel) but their stats are biased. 5% of Starsteel items have horrible stats; the rest have stats that are at least above average and can go five points over the cap sometimes. The point is that they save the forger time by not making him reforge. Starsteel items also protect natural magical protection, although not even as good as magicproofed Great Robes. Starsteel designs are specific; you can't make a common field plate design out of Starsteel.

Ice: Cooks can use ice to make lots of ice cream, really fast. One ice commodity also replaces one Power for Aquamancers casting Sweetfount and melding.

Algontherine Spice: A substance secreted by Algontherines very, very, very slowly. It congeals into tiny clumps that can be scooped up from Aetherspace; clumps (Or 'spice fields') appear randomly and explode after a while, so you have to take what you can and run. An alchemist with a Philosopher's stone can use the Spice to replace any herb (So it serves as a cap for the herb market; nothing ever goes beyond the price of Algontherine Spice). Algontherine Spice, when eaten, has random effects; it might cause a burst of Power, it might heal a random affliction, it might give a random affliction. It's also mildly addictive, and taking it over prolonged periods of time causes Insanity coupled with random bursts of gratuitous Power. The only effect of withdrawal from Algontherine Spice is death.

EDIT:

The Aetherways can become either the Far East (East Indies) or the Caribbean (West Indies). Or both; create a second Aetherspace beyond the eastern barriers and put the really rare things there. And then let the players transplant the rare spices from the eastern section closer to home.