Currently, I am recouping the enormous quantity of in-game-earned and ooc-credit-sold gold that I spent on my lovely lovely aethership by...

1) Ferrying people to aetherbubbles for small amounts.
2) Ferrying the occasional rich customer (who makes an exorbitant offer before I have the chance to tell them how much fare is) to aetherbubbles for really large amounts.

But as the gold/time doesn't scale well compared to bashing and influencing, my aethership is currently functioning as a really flashy, organic sci-fi ship looking manse.

As such, I've spent a good deal of time attempting to come up with some solutions to this problem... and then I shoot them down because I'm so overly critical of myself. Here goes:

Create aethership ramscoops, which are used to collect bits of destroyed monsters for payout on an aetherbubble.
WHAT IT SOLVES: Aetherbashing will no longer halt monetary income, you would be able to continue to fatten your wallets while slowly gaining experience.
PROBLEMS: I'm going to come back to this one a lot, so pay attention. As it is now, this would allow for an unlimited supply of gold to enter the economy. With a script set up for both a pilot and a gunner, a pilot can fly in circles, generating an unlimited number of spawns, while the gunner kills the creatures as they spawn. With minimal monitoring, you could easily make millions of gold in hours. What's more, you wouldn't hurt anyone else's ability to do so at the same time, as creature spawns are not limited to a certain number per hour. So a team of people with a fleet of ships could easily flood the economy with really really easily-gotten gold, causing massive credit inflation and such. Any other method of gold gathering would become obsolete, and prices on sold goods would inflate to the point where they would become pointless. Not Good.
POSSIBLE SOLUTION: The mob that receives the dead stuff could only take so many corpses in a set time period, and the corpses would have fast decay times.

Increase experience gain from aetherbashing. Players would gain experience at a rate relative to their level. (this would need to be adjusted so the relative experience/hour would be comparable to normal bashing/influencing)
WHAT IT SOLVES: Aetherbashing will no longer be completely pointless, you would be able to continue to level at a rate that is comparable to other forms of bashing.
PROBLEMS: Again, there is potential for unlimited experience gain... it would just take a bit longer. Also, there is little to no risk when aetherbashing in a fast ship with a good pilot, since you can stay out of an enemy's attack range while still firing back at them. And since you can vitae/lich(/transmigrate?) out of a ship's explosion, you don't even lose much experience if your pilot falls asleep. This results in infinitesimally small loss while gaining steady amounts of experience for little effort. Not Good.
POSSIBLE SOLUTION: Increase power usage of guns so that extensive use would quickly cause the ship to die, adding a tangible power (and time, in the case of finding a power vortex and siphoning it) cost to continued bashing. Also, strip all ressurection defenses and destroy corpses upon ship implosion, forcing crew to pray upon implosion. To lessen impact, create escape pod module that forces a crewmember locked into it to travel to the nearest aether dock upon ship destruction, which would allow players to escape from a bad situation, provided they can react quickly enough. Also, create an artifact diamonut for the pilot chair only that allows the chair to function as an escape pod.

Scatter limited quantities of raw diamonuts randomly through the aether, which can be collected through a ramscoop and returned to the Facility for gold and experience.
WHAT IT SOLVES: Gold and experience from the aether. Good thing.
PROBLEMS: Way. Too. Tedious. If they're in set places, it would be trivial to write a script to collect all the diamonuts in mere minutes, but if they're randomly scattered? It would take forever to find all of them and retrieve them. Seriously. Forever.
POSSIBLE SOLUTION: Allow ships to auto-detect diamonuts, similarly to the way they detect aether docks, but with a shorter range. "A floating diamonut is to the northeast" or soemthing like that.

Allow players to siphon power directly from energy collectors over a period of time.
WHAT IT SOLVES: Directly allows rogues a source of power that doesn't rely on an organization's nexus and patient people powerlinking.
PROBLEMS: Directly allows rogues a source of power that doesn't rely on an organization's nexus and patient people powerlinking.
POSSIBLE SOLUTION: None. You either make lots of people (rogues and people who want to pretend their manse is a city) happy, or you go against the "rogues are bad" policy Lusternia's been flaunting for a while.

More to come when I'm not falling alseep at the keyboard.

Good, although all of these have been suggested before.

Well really, the solution to having unlimited amounts of gold would be to have them drop like 50-100 gold, every so often, so maybe 3 in 10 would drop it, now splitting that amount between a 5 or so crew, isn't really that much when you think about it. Also making it so that there is a 1 in 10 chance of having the beastie drop a aether commodity, which can be sold to the comm shops at double the price of the regular comm, would give it something besides mindless triggers, and getting basically nothing besides power, and also not ruin the economy.

Yuck. For how much an aethership costs, that would completly and utterly suck. And like you said, most likely, you end up splitting the gain with your crew. It would definatly have to be higher thant that.

Yar.

And you know why rogues aren't able to do well in Lusternia? Because it goes against the picture perfect "grand plan" of four polar opposite organizations. Why would we want to mix it up a little? *bangs head against the wall*

I don't know why anyone would want to be a hobo anyway. I'm imagining a new god coming to Lusternia, he or she lands on the peak, and people from all the nations flock around him or her. Richter comes forward, the god asks him his name and title. "I am Richter, leader of the hobos and aetherpirates of this world!"

Anyway, there are already three ways to gain personal power, and two of them are available to hobos. I don't see why they couldn't make it 4 and 3, as long as siphoning from a collector to personal reserves would be just as slow as linking from nexi.

My, you guys are snippy. I have no problems with rogues gaining power. After all, rogues have always been able to get power from wild nodes in astral. And before any more of your "picture perfect" snide comments, note we did add tracking skill for warrior mercenaries. Will the majority of the game system always be tied to city/commune nexuses? Yes. But that's not to say we will be open to some flexibility. No, there will probably never be a "neutral" guild at any point in the near future.

Anyway, there are more plans for aetherspace but we haven't had the time.

Psh, I'm not the leader of hobos and aetherpirates. I'm the leader of a small group of intellectuals that are, for the most part, focused on personal growth (Roark's ideals) and history/knowledge (as in, we try to focus on the "main" story a lot, quite a few discussions about Kethuru, etc).

I'd love to be able to siphon from a collector. Hell, give it double balance, it'd be neat still.



Sorry, I wasn't in a particularly super mood, but I got my coffee since then.

Though it's true we can use wild nodes in astral (or just get a powerplex), I'm going to respectfully disagree about the usefulness of tracking for a mercenary, due to the fact that you cannot use half of the skills (nor can you even choose tracking as a mercenary, without having a guild first).

And we're all looking forward to the aethercraft plans you have, we know you've all been busy. Selthar's right about there not being much point right now, but we imagine that will change. I'm interested to see what kind of additions will make the aethercraft system a mainstream feature, rather than an oddity like figurines. Thus far, we've never been disappointed in new additions.

What Richter said is right.. yes, you added Tracking for Rogue warriors, but they can't select it, nor is there a denizen that they can learn from, nor is there a kennel from which to get a pet.. and nor can they even use the pet they had if they manage to keep it alive after going rogue.

I know the Administrations stance is "Well, the main aspect of Tracking is the Traps", but lets face it, most rogues aren't combatants, so the Utility portion of the Hound is by far more useful, and that's the one thing they don't get.

I think it would be nice if you added a neutral location where Mercenaries could learn from. Even make it a choice in the beginning, so that warriors who wanted to be mercs from the beginning could actually get their skills, rather than the current situation, where you'd have someone join a guild, waste a lot of people's time (undersecs and everyone else who pitches in to help novices and supply them), only to quit once they get their skills.

So, yes, you added Tracking for rogue warriors.. but in all reality.. Rogue warriors have no access to it once they leave their guild.. which sort of defeats the purpose.

I mean, if I were to pick Totems/Stag and left the Serenguard, I'd still get to keep all my totems as well as my face paints and a few other abilities, which would all be far more useful to a rogue than Tracking minus the hound.

Do you see what we're trying to say?

Edit: Just to note, by neutral location with a teacher, I don't mean a guild. You'd have no channel and no link to eachother, except you learned from some random, wandering taurian mercenary. Maybe have him literally wander, like change location every hour or so, so that there'd be some work involved in the mercenaries learning.

And just to make a note on your comments, it is my opinion that there are no mercenary warriors because of the lack of functionality of the skillset for a rogue, not because all rogues are not fighters.

And here's the hunter:

Name: Trograk, master hunter

Enter: Moving silently, Trograk, master hunter, stalks in from the $dir

Exit: Ever so carefully, Trograk, master hunter, stalks out to the $dir

Short desc: Trograk, master hunter is here, his powerful body covered in a layer of dirt and sweat.

Long desc: Large, muscular, and standing nearly seven feet tall, this taurian makes for an imposing figure. He wears a faded pair of brown trousers, and wears no shirt. Two large horns adorn his head, the right horn a perfect and deadly weapon, while the left has been broken near the tip, perhaps from some terrible battle. Dirt and sweat coveres his body, and an array of tattoos cover his battle scarred-chest.

Dead: His noble spirit having been snuffed out, Trograk, master hunter lies here.

Attack1: Trograk whips his net around $person, tightening it around them, and powerfully jabs them/you with a massive black trident. (web and damage)

Attack2: With a fearsome bellow, Trograk launches himself at $person

Randomemote1: Trograk looks cautiously from side to side, looking for signs of life, or danger.

Randomemote2: Trograk paces about slowly, concentrating on his surroundings, eyes narrowed.

Wander pattern: same as pilgrims

If you ASK TROGRAK FOR COMPANION, does "Trograk puts his fingers to his lips and lets out a shrill whistle. A (whatever the admins would choose, maybe a mountain lion ) bounds into view, stopping suddenly. (at this time, companion #blah would be created at that location, and assigned loyalty to yourself.

If you GREET TROGRAK, and have tracking, he will say, "Are you a student of tracking?" If you belong to a city/commune he will say, "Pity you cannot have a wild companion, I prefer them to the wolves of the communes, or the hounds of the cities." If you do not belong to a city/commune, "He will say, "Aha, a true wanderer! Perhaps you wish for a companion? All you have to do is ask, friend." If you do not have tracking, he will say, "A pity you do not know the joys of hunting and tracking, perhaps someday you will care to learn?"

It's really not that hard to make a character, tell them you're reading the scrolls, and never talk to them again until you need your novice test. In other realms at least. Here, you don't even need the test, just hang out for 24 hours questing or something.

I guess that was always at like, 2am, though, after work.

I said most rogues aren't combatants, and that's true.

If Mercs had access to all the skills of tracking, you'd then find rogue combatants. But until that happens, most rogues simply aten't combatants.



And you'd need to have enough lessons to trans all three guildskills right off the bat, or else you'd be sort of screwed when it came to learning.. tracking especially (given that there are so few of them)

Most rogues wouldn't be combatants anyway. The mercernary concept just doesn't work in Lusternia, for non-coded reasons as well as coded ones.

I don't know about that; a rogue paladin gets access to all the nifty warrior skills which can really hurt -and- is immune to Inquisition.. its a pretty sweet deal.

You did, however, cripple the Tracking skill for rogues by not letting them get their doggies... I heard those have thieving skills, which I agree rogues shouldn't get, but maybe allow them to have some of the dog abilities?

Losing the dogs isn't exactly 'crippling', is it? They have a lot of nifty abilities, but it seems to me that the traps are much more vital in actual combat. Would still be nice if a rogue could get one, but is it that important?

How many rogue combatants do you know?

That's all traps are good for. Oh, or being a royal pain and setting 20 spring traps that all fling into eachother so that they fling someone around an area like a hot potato

Other than that, the dog allows for nifty but useful things like searching out stuff that is on the ground, scouting an area, delivering things to people, locating denizens, and allowing a bit of travel (which really shouldn't have cost so much. That was just mean--it was given power to "limit" the "grief" factor in situations like inner sea, but really, if you're hunting turtles to win the battle, you're not going to care about a bit of power, and it falls under "defense" in city/commune laws, so its no real loss. What it did accomplish was nerfing the flexibility of a tracker who is just trying to hunt quickly.. which is really what a Tracker should be good at.. getting to their prey quickly.. but meh)

The point is, traps are more or less useless to rogues, because generally they don't fight, and if they do, they are so expensive that they end up needing the speed boost given by the hound to be able to make up a bit for having the most expensive guild skillset in the game.

If I'm not mistaken, only Sacraments users are immune to inquisition, and if the person takes Tracking they won't have Sacraments.

Whether or not traps are useful or not is irrelevant, I can't have traps as a rogue.